A NORTH Yorkshire dairy farm has beaten 600 others to win the 2015 Promar Milkminder Manager of the Year award.

Roger and Judith Hildreth, and their son Thomas, run just under 100 Holstein cows at Curlew Farm, Hessay, near York, and received the award at last week's (9th) Livestock Event at the NEC, Birmingham.

Promar Milkminder is a comprehensive costing scheme which helps farmers improve technical and financial performance.

The Hildreth's have just under 100 Holstein cows which average 10,200 litres. They are managed on a straightforward, low cost system based on grazing and buffer feeding in the summer.

In winter grass silage and maize are trough fed in what were formerly straw yards into which sand bed cubicles were installed in 2013.

The business objective is to maximise cow margin driven by milk from forage. Last year 3,700 litres were produced from forage. Attention to detail is key to all they do with the objective of managing costs but always looking for ways to improve herd performance.

In the year to March 2015, yields have been increased by 700 litres while feed costs per litre were reduced by over 0.5ppl, with a feed rate of 0.31kg/l. Margin over purchased feed is an impressive £2,198 per cow.

James Dunn, Promar managing director, said: "Attention to detail has allowed the Hildreths to achieve an outstanding level of technical performance. By focussing on controlling costs, they have been able to maintain margin over purchased feed per cow while reducing other cost areas to manage total cost of production.

"They also understand the importance of working closely with their customer and of engaging with the public. They participate in Open Farm Sunday and Roger’s face has been on milk cartons sold locally in Asda stores.

The Hildreths were selected from three regional winners. Award judge Richard Bell said: "All the finalists shared key attributes. They were driven, ambitious, great cow people and very capable cow managers, open to change, aware of the challenges their business faces and positioning their businesses to meet the challenges of a volatile milk price.

"They concentrated on the parts of their business they can influence and appreciated that business management solutions require a skilled team both on and off farm."