“AHV is part of our strategic plan”

My name is Ed Seaton, the manager of Styche Holsteins and we’re here on the Cheshire/Shropshire border in a place called Audlem. We are milking 240 cows at the moment and the plan going forward is not really to increase numbers but just to get better in what we do really. Make the farm more sustainable with homegrown forages and become less reliant on bought in feed and bought in anything really. That is the goal. Sustainability is a key word at the moment and that’s what we got to be about.

Calves

The calves are reared on milk until 8 weeks old, on whole milk at the moment due to the price of powder. We have contracted young stock out in the past but now we have everything on farm. We put a new shed up last year to try and house all the young stock. Here we use a fair bit of sex semen so we always have a lot of heifer calves.

Optimising udder health

I heard about AHV through an Irish student and I think he used in on a farm in Ireland and kept telling me we ought to try it. I wanted to find a way of going back to the traditional methods of looking after udder health and when I read a bit more and spoke to Ben about it and it seemed to make perfect sense. Help with recovery periods and just support the udder health. So what we started using was the Extra Tablet with the Aspi and then the Booster Tablet to help the cow through the recovery period and any udder challenge you had.

More saleable milk in the tank

Going forward what I’d like to do is use these products as a part of a strategic plan so then we are not firefighting, we’re supporting the whole cow health rather than just udder health and the longevity of the cow. The main benefits we’ve seen from using AHV is the reduction of the use of traditional methods of the way we used to treat cows, we’ve gone on to more of a holistic approach and we’re seeing huge benefits. The main one being were putting more saleable milk in the tank and we haven’t got cows out of the tank.

Support from AHV

I had great support from AHV. The advice I’ve had has been second to none and any advice I want on any problem we have is on the end of the phone or a message away, it’s easy to get and I found the support has been great really from using the products. I definitely would recommend AHV to other farms and the products we used and I have done already. I’ve told other farmers about it. I think it’s a great product, it has made my life easier and it will support the longevity and the health of anybody’s herd so why wouldn’t you want to use it really.