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The Prince of Wales met farmers and food producers on a visit to the Cotswolds and expressed his full admiration for their efforts in developing more environmentally focused processes and produce.

Paying attention to details and making lots of practical, small changes is the way to improve transition management and overall herd performance, according to Dr Huw McConochie, dairy nutritionist with Zinpro Corporation.

The ongoing saga of footpath signs continues.

We spoke to three independent experts about transition cow management.

Welsh dairy farmer Andrew Thomas says that making small changes to his transition cow management is delivering dividends in terms of cow health, performance and productivity.

More and more dairy farmers are appreciating the overall benefits of cow monitoring technology which gives them intelligence and awareness of the cow’s overall health, as well as their readiness to conceive. Such systems are proving their worth, particularly during the critical transition period.

Premier Nutrition’s Transition Management System is helping farmers and feed advisers improve cow health and production by evaluating performance during the transition period (30 days pre-calving to 30 days post-calving).

The Roundelm Herd, based in Elmore, Gloucestershire, is achieving increased fertility rates and finding it easier to manage transition as a result of installing the SenseHub herd monitoring system from Allflex Livestock Intelligence.

‘The cow is the customer’, believes farmer Stephen Cope, of Bawhill Farm at Adderley, Shropshire. This philosophy is what has led Stephen Cope to take a holistic, integrated and data-driven approach to running his herd.

Using data from its Transition Management System, Premier Nutrition has developed a series of key targets for transition including ‘alarm rates’ when action is urgently called for.