Roger Lewis’ cautionary words originate from personal experience. Three years after losing 78 of his best and most productive cows to bovine TB, the anguish has never left this third-generation farmer.
“It felt like our world was falling apart that day,” he says, recalling the test reading that was to rob him of a quarter of his milking herd.
“It is not until you are affected by it personally that you realise the impact it can have on you, your family and your workforce.”
Roger farms with his parents, Philip and Sheila, in a high-risk TB area but it wasn’t until their devastating TB breakdown in June 2018 that he felt the full force of this insidious disease and the fallout.
The timing could not have been worse
The timing could not have been worse. They were slap-bang in the middle of installing a 40-point rotary milking parlour.
“Here we were, spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on a new parlour and we had lost a quarter of the herd,” says Roger.
“As ever, it was the good animals we lost, third, fourth, fifth lactation cows, the most productive ones.”
The ‘Poyersfield’ prefix was established in 1993 shortly after the Lewis family bought Poyerston, a 200-acre dairy farm on the outskirts of Pembroke.
Until then they had farmed near Kilgetty, on the holding Philip and Sheila bought in 1975, neighbouring the farm where Roger’s grandfather started farming.
This move allowed Roger’s parents to build up cow numbers in the commercial autumn-calving herd to 110.
There was no prospect of expanding further due to the farm’s location. “The farm was surrounded by three villages and those villages seemed to be getting closer so there was no chance of expansion, in fact the opposite was happening,” Roger explains.
The family spent 10 years searching for a suitable dairy farm elsewhere in Pembrokeshire to grow their business.
They struck lucky when Poyerston came onto the market for the second time in 10 years.
They needed a buyer for their existing farm but fortune was smiling upon them, from the pages of Farmers Weekly.
“A farmer had put an advert in the Farmers Weekly seeking a 100-acre farm in west Wales so it all fell into place,” says Roger.
Poyerston had been run as a dairy farm until two years before they bought it, and they arrived with 110 cows to milk in the 10/20 parlour.
Expansion was always part of the plan
The farm purchase coincided with Roger starting his farming studies at Aberystwyth University.
“It wasn’t ideal timing but that was the reason I chose Aberystwyth, so I could come home to work every weekend.”
With only 22 years separating Roger and his father, expansion was always part of the plan as the business needed to support two families.
“A 100-acre 100-cow dairy farm couldn’t support both families,” says Roger, who has two daughters, 15-year-old Charlotte and Sophie, aged 13, with his wife, Sarah. “Moving here has allowed us to steadily expand over the last 27 years.”
The business was initially a ‘typical mixed farm’. “As well as dairying we retained beef calves and stores and grew a bit of corn.”
As the dairy side of the business grew, the other enterprises diminished. “When I came home from Aberystwyth I wanted to milk more cows,” Roger admits.
They took on extra blocks of land and grew cow numbers by 10 or so a year with homebred replacements.
The herd has always been autumn-calving. “If you are brought up with a particular system it captures your imagination,” says Roger.
By 1996, the farm was growing forage maize and as well as cow numbers increasing, milk yield was too.
It plateaued at 8,000 litres but as the system developed yields increased too.
"You always want to improve"
In April 2020, yield averaged 10,261 litres at 4.24% butterfat and 3.32% protein, with milk sold to Haverfordwest-based company Mark Hunter to market under the Totally Welsh brand.
The focus is on producing milk from forage, grazed and ensiled – 4,679 litres are produced from forage.
Grass management has developed over the last 10 years, using best practice gleaned from grass-based dairy farms.
“You always want to improve, it is about looking at what others do,’’ says Roger.
“As an industry we spend thousands of pounds on consultants but the best advice we get is often from our parents, fellow farmers and discussion groups. When we share ideas, we are all better off.’’
He believes too much is made of the Holstein Friesian’s poor performance on grass but he points out: “Fortunately we are not trying to breed these animals at grass, we are just producing milk.
“The cow we have going out to graze in March is different from breeds specifically bred for grazing, she is in calf and coming off a great plane of nutrition.
“The first four weeks at grazing are our greatest challenge, where we gradually remove buffer feed.”
By May, cows will be producing a 30-litre average at 250 days in milk on grass and cake in the parlour.
May is often his most profitable month because feed costs are low and milk production high.
“Our milk buyer wants cows grazing and it is about developing a system that we are happy with but one that must ultimately make money.”
Milking facilities were first upgraded in 2001 when a 15/30 herringbone parlour was installed at a point when the herd numbered 150 cows. But, as the herd grew, so did pressure on the facilities.
By 2018 there were 330 milkers in the herd and each milking took four hours.
With sufficient land and infrastructure to support 350 cows, the decision was taken to invest in a 40-point rotary and to grow the herd further.
“At 350 cows we have now reached the point we are comfortable with,” says Roger. “We went through the process of the last parlour outgrowing the herd and I personally can’t see the numbers increasing.
“It is the efficiency from a stable number of cows that we are now chasing.”
The herd has recovered from the blow struck by TB thanks to an excess number of dairy replacements that were being reared when the breakdown occurred.
Excess heifers had been retained to tighten the calving block, by front loading the herd with heifers and selling cows calving at the end of the block.
“Our saving grace was that we had 110 heifers, most of which we had planned to bring into the herd in September and some we were going to sell but we brought them all into herd,” says Roger.
He recalls vividly the day of the test read, June 7th 2018.
He was anticipating a clearing test from a very small breakdown in late 2017 but instead it identified 55 milking cows and 15 heifers as reactors and Inconclusive Reactors (IRs).
“The first three cows that came through the race had huge lumps. It was the most horrific day ever and then we had to start the process of isolating the animals and valuing them. We lost generations of family lines,” he says.
“How had we gone from a clear test in the March to a disaster in June?”
Although there was compensation for the animals culled there was of course no financial recognition of lost milk production.
When the new milking parlour was completed, there were only 300 cows in the herd and 110 of those were first calvers.
Roger estimates that the breakdown resulted in a 500,000-litre loss of milk. Production has now been restored to 3.5 million litres annually.
The breakdown took its toll on everyone involved, including the farm vet and workers installing the new parlour.
“They saw the impact of shooting young yearling heifers who had years of lactations ahead of them,” Roger says.
Whilst that test was heartbreaking, Roger saw it as the start of the journey to getting the herd clear of TB.
“We took advice which is hard to swallow in the industry, we removed several IRs in the November, just hoping to draw a line under it.
“Here we were with a new parlour and with milking cow numbers dropping yet we were getting rid of cows that had no lesions.”
But he believes that decision had a huge influence on the herd going clear in April 2019.
“The April test was a fantastic test but until the last animal goes through the race you are expecting the worst.
“All of a sudden we were clear and could sell the 200 beef cattle that were drawing on the system. We are not a beef farm, we were fortunate to have a lot of shed space on a rented farm but what you can’t buy is time and the overstocking had a massive impact on the heifer replacements and the milking cows.”
He was grateful that the test came just days before the 18-month deadline that would have ramped up the herd restrictions to a severe level.
Roger is convinced TB was introduced by an outside source. “We had cows with lesions, there was no getting away from the fact that the disease had got into the herd.”
Testing has now been scaled back to an annual test.
“We can only hope for the best going forward, it is a lottery because the disease is out there, that hasn’t gone.”
The fear of another breakdown is ever present so he has continued to breed a large number of replacements.
“We still have a lot of young animals in the system because there is always that concern that we will get caught again.”
As the legacy of the battering wrought by TB starts to dim, the Lewises have refocused on the push for improvements and efficiencies that have always been their drivers.
The dry cow period is where they focus a lot of attention.
Instead of chopped straw being fed in the close-up dry period, wholecrop was fed last year. This achieved excellent rumen fill in the run up to calving, and was supplemented with high levels of metabolisable protein.
“We definitely saw an increase in yields and intakes were fantastic,” Roger reports.
He has also been balancing the diets for amino acids for the last two years. The results, he says, have been ‘very pleasing’.
“We have just had our best year for fertility with a 53% conception rate and 39% pregnancy rate from cows peaking at 40 litres in January, right in the middle of the breeding period.
“I think the way we have fed this year in the dry and milking periods has had a huge impact on it.”
September will be a busy month with 230 cows due to calve and the remainder in October and November.
All AI is done in-house.
Heifers are fitted with collars to allow heats to be picked up remotely. This resulted in a 69% conception from sexed semen.
Roger reckons that fertility, together with nutrition, has the biggest influence on a farm’s financial performance.
“You can get a lot of things wrong and still have a profitable farm but not if you get fertility and feed wrong,” he suggests.
The farming enterprise, which covers 550 acres, half owned and half rented, grows 60 acres of winter barley, with all grain crimped and fed in the milking ration and straw used on-farm.
The ration also includes 70 acres of forage maize together with grass silage and a blend; concentrates are fed at a flat rate of 4kg/head in the parlour.
Triticale is grown for whole-cropping to feed to the dry cows.
As Roger has got older his focus has changed. “The pedigree element was the big thing for me but now it is all about the financial performance of the business.”