Month: July 2011

Bon & Margaret Martel produced another strong team from the Les Jaonnets herd to set the standard at the 98th RGHA Show, there were 5 exhibitors in the cow classes and the winner of Class One for cows six years and over was Les Jaonnets Sunny Maid who is milking with her 4th Calf and had given over 10,000 kgs with her third lactation. She is the dam of Les Jaonetts Conquerors Merlin who has semen available from EGCS at present. Sunny Maid was later awarded the Championship and the Queens Cup.

Guernsey milk products were amongst the prize winners at this years Nantwich International Cheese show which with over 3700 entries from across the world claims to be the biggest. Winning a Gold Medal for their Plain Yoghurt were Tiresford Guernsey Gold and this will give great pleasure to Andrew, Sue …

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Non-pedigree Guernseys from the Jakeman family of Upton on Severn met a strong demand when sold at the Bristol Sales Centre in the monthly sale organised by Norton & Brooksbank and Gwilwmn Richards with an average of £1030 for the 54 cows and £404 for the 51 maiden heifers. Main …

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Mark & Susan Jones from Garway, Hereford are taking part in Herefordshire Food week between 13th and 20th August with the ice cream production open to the public each morning and farm walks and the afternoon milking available to be seen each afternoon. This is a worthwhile effort and goes …

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I have known Chris Carpenter for several years as I met him originally in Sussex when he was milking and managing a herd of Guernseys and “Dutch” bred Holsteins for Clive Stickland at Billingshurst and making a very good job of the herd. We lost touch when he moved to another herd, but about three years ago he rang to say that he was on the shortlist for a “Council” tenanted farm and if successful would like to milk Guernseys, that didn’t work out on that occasion but he did not give up on his dream.

By chance on Wednesday at the NMR/RABDF Open Day at Bristol I met with James Hanks of Reading University who has developed the software used by NMR in their Interherd programs the best known of which is Herd Companion. This allows analysis of 17 Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) of data collected at the monthly milk recording and shows a five year history for each herd.

 James has done analysis of a group of 33 Guernsey herds that have the full NMR recording program and has made a link available for us to use.