This starts with taking a cow-centric approach – looking at every cow and looking at her whole life. It has to bring everything together - production, longevity, rearing, fertility and genetics.

At its core is setting targets and knowing if each cow hits or misses the target. It sounds simple, but this is a big change for many farmers. And it’s more than just having a target, it’s knowing why your cows are on or off track.

The biggest change this creates is a change in mindset. From ‘I’ve gone OK with what I’ve done’ to ‘I had no real idea there is so much more I can achieve with the herd I have’ and even to ‘I can improve my herd much quicker than I realised and it pays off time and again with improved production, more fertile cows and more lactations’.

Farmers often sense this opportunity – it’s why there has been such a strong uptake in new innovations like collars and in-line milk meters. But a new piece of equipment doesn’t provide any bigger solutions on its own. It improves a function like heat detection. It’s important in it’s own right. But the real value comes from informing whether the cow is on target or off target. And for that you have to have a target and a system for looking at the big picture of your herd operations.

That’s why the starting point is to work with the data and the equipment you already have. And to work with what you already know and already aspire about your cows. It’s about putting all of this knowledge and capacity you have together in the right way and the right place.

It’s also about needing to know what it takes for the cows to fit your farm system – how you want to farm.

This means setting and achieving targets can be different for every farm – the key is it has to be right for your farm. Not in a lazy ‘every farm is different’ way, it has to be in a deliberate way that really drives value in your own business.

Farm Success is a way of working with your business to build a new and cow-centric way of thinking about your herd and achieving ‘Herd Operating Excellence’.

It’s about making high impact changes over time, that when you put them all together, unlock value that keeps on being delivered time and again.

Change happens fast and slow. Fast improvements can often be simple changes that come from seeing what is happening on your farm more clearly. It’s really satisfying and leads to a sense of wanting to find and extract even more value.

Sustained change is often slower to achieve and more rewarding to achieve. It’s a deep sense of the farm system working time and time again.