Gwern Hefin Project Introduction: The cost benefit of rearing your own dairy heifers

Site: Gwern Hefin, Llanycil, Bala

Technical Officer: Simon Pitt

Project Title: The cost benefit of rearing your own dairy heifers

Gwernhefin farm near Bala is an all-year-round dairy herd that is run as a flying herd with all the cows put to beef, which are then reared on a separate holding at Ceredigion. Dairy replacements are bought at market as either calved down heifers or cows in milk and, as a result, the herd is run as an all year round (AYR) calving herd.

Gwernhefin wants to move towards a spring calving herd. It’s notoriously difficult running a flying dairy herd to be able to buy replacement cows or heifers that are right for the system.

This project aims to investigate the costs, advantages and disadvantages of rearing own heifer replacements against buying in (flying herd). Flying herds have the potential to introduce diseases and lower genetic merit than home bred and reared youngstock. For some, a flying herd allows them to focus solely on milk production and the farm’s forage for productive animals that will quickly bring in a return on investment during that first milking home from the mart or vendor’s farm. 

Past studies have concluded that rearing a heifer replacement can cost on average £1,800, varying from £1,000 to £3,000. This project will investigate what the total costs and practicalities of rearing own replacements, specific for the focus site, against buying in replacements are. With these issues in mind, this project sets out to calculate the value/cost of using sexed semen on the best of the bought in heifers to build in an initial home bred herd along with the other benefits that this potentially will bring long term to the business.