Pippa Piotrowicz (Chippenham)

I recently attended the George Vets Cow Convention, which entailed four seminars led by both vets and external speakers.  One of the seminars was about how cow and human emotions are not too different and how both can impact each other which was fascinating.  An example of this would be if you enter your herd angry and unintentionally take this out on your cows.  This in turn makes your cows go from being relaxed to being anxious, stressed and potentially scared – all emotions we as humans feel too.  This may impact their milk production, fertility etc.

My ‘food for thought’ here is, are our/farm employee’s emotions having an impact on our herd more than we think.  If so, can you think of anything which you can do for yourself or your employees to help reduce this?

Another ‘food for thought’ moment for me this month, was during our graduate training with Holly Greenman, on Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG).  As of April 2024, all development will need to increase the BNG by a minimum of 10%, resulting in farmers being approached to sell their BNG on their farm to developers.  Many questions came from this discussion: Is it worth selling the BNG and will I need it in the future?  There is no easy answer to these questions and each farm and situation differs.  The points to remember here is:

There are many ‘food for thought’ questions relating to BNG, but I’ve summarised the main ones which stuck with me.  It doesn’t mean don’t explore the idea, it just means be cautious and make sure you understand your agreement to its full depth!

If you would like to discuss any of the above points further, contact Pippa at pippapiotrowicz@fcgagric.com or your local FCG Office.