The event – now in its eighth year – is not only renowned for its first class show of dairy cattle of all breeds but also its facility to provide an ideal opportunity to network, share knowledge, learn and most importantly, do business. As a result, there has been a record re-booking of trade stand space from existing and new exhibitors who will feature across the extensive internal and external exhibition areas. Exhibitors include feed manufacturers, animal health suppliers, vets, milk buyers, dairy and farm equipment suppliers – plus professional service providers and charities.
As one of the first big dairy shows to get going after the Covid pandemic last year, UK Dairy Day attracted an attendance of more than 7000 visitors in 2021, and it is hoped spectator numbers will be even higher this time.
Organised by Holstein UK, the event also features three national breed shows. UK Dairy Day will again be hosting the established National Holstein Show along with The National Ayrshire Show and The National Brown Swiss Show. There are also classes during the morning for Dairy Shorthorn, Guernsey and Jersey and there will be live streaming and social media coverage throughout the day providing an international marketing platform to display the UK’s top dairy cattle.
Show judges
National Holstein Show – Adam Liddle
Adam Liddle and his wife, Nicole, own and operate Liddleholme Farm in Argyle, New York with their children Anthony, Brock and Hailee. Liddleholme is a 300-acre farm and is home to 70 milking Holstein’s with 37 being scored Excellent. Highlighted by breeding Liddleholme Resurect Lu Ex97 4E.
National Ayrshire Show – Lynn Lee
Lynn is a lifelong dairy cattle breeder with a wide range of experience and has previously worked as an auctioneer, a type evaluator for the American Jersey Cattle Association and a show judge. Lynn’s judging assignments over the past several years have included World Dairy Expo, the All-American Dairy Show at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Eastern States Expo, and the Ayrshire, Guernsey and Holstein shows at the North American International Livestock Expo. Lynn judged the 2007 All American Junior Jersey Show, the 2008 National Jug Futurity and the 2010 Western National Jersey Show. He has also travelled to Colombia, Canada, Finland, Guatemala, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand to judge the National Shows in these countries.
Lynn and his family operate a 340-acre farm and over the years they have bred and owned numerous All-Americans and reserve All-Americans bearing Lee’s Dixieland Prefix. He is also co-owner of Tradition Auction Services which is a full-service auction company selling dairy cattle, beef cattle and farm equipment.
National Brown Swiss – Daniele Galbardi
From a small village close to Iseo Lake, in the province of Brescia, North Italy, Daniele and his brother run Galby farm. The third-generation brothers have a herd of 50 Brown Swiss cows in milk, along with followers. The average annual production is 11,000kg with 4.15%BF and 3.84%P. Their showing highlights include winning reserve grand champion at the Italian National Show in 2010, winning junior champion in 2013 and taking grand champion and best udder in 2014.
Since 2008, Daniele has been a multi-breed classifier assessing Holstein, Jersey, Brown Swiss and Fleckvieh cattle and he has classified around 100,000 cows. Daniele has been judging Brown Swiss for many years and since 2016, he has been a member of the European judging panel. He has judged more than 100 shows across Italy, including three times at his National Show. In 2020, he was honoured to be the official judge for the European Brown Swiss Championship and his judging has taken him to France, Switzerland and Perú.
Jersey – Eddie Barrett
Eddie is the dairy breeding programme manager with the National Cattle Breeding Centre (NCBC) in Ireland. He, along with his team, is responsible for the delivery of an elite selection of top dairy sires for the benefit of NCBC shareholders and farmers and the export requirements of Ireland Genetics.
Eddie grew up on the family farm which is home to the Laurelmore herd. He is a member of the IHFA official Holstein judges’ panel, having been first selected in 1992. He is also on the Jersey Cattle Society of the UK judging panel. He has officiated as master judge for IHFA judging conference and been a member of the selection panel for the IHFA Holstein team at the European Show in Brussels.
Eddie has also been on official breed and inter-breed judging assignments in Ireland, the UK and France, including the inter-breed judge at RUAS Balmoral and Welsh Dairy Show, along with numerous national and regional Holstein and Jersey herd competition assignments.
Guernsey – Laura Sales
Laura comes from Radstock, Somerset and works part-time for the Walters family of Creech Hill Ayrshires, where she helps with the calf rearing and relief milking alongside bringing up her two children.
Laura was born into a Guernsey background and has a lifelong association with the breed. She spent most of her working life in Bristol with the Bickfield herd of 300 guernseys owned by the Durbin family. She has been on the Guernsey Society’s judging panel since the age of 19 and has judged all over the country at local and county shows, judging all breeds along the way. Laura is delighted to have been asked to judge at this year’s UK Dairy Day.
Dairy Shorthorn – David Winnington
David milks 165 original Dairy Shorthorns with his wife Debbie on their Moor End Farm with daughters Grace and Naomi, alongside their trusted friends and staff.
Their Rantonall herd enjoyed great success at the 2021 National Shorthorn Show, winning reserve supreme champion with their ‘star’ cow Rantonall Songstress 50 Ex93 and reserve breed junior champion with their junior calf, with the team picking up many rosettes. David is a great believer in breeding from the best female lines, then using the best pure genetics, old and new, to produce a strong, hard-wearing cow with outstanding legs and feet. These genetics have produced profitable high type cows borne out by the 20 Ex cows in the Rantonall herd.
David has had the privilege of judging at most of the major shows in Great Britain including The Royal Show, Great Yorkshire and Royal Highland as well as other leading dairy shows, county shows and herd competitions. He has also crossed the water and judged the top shows in Northern Ireland and Ireland. David is currently the vice president of the Shorthorn Society.
Sharing Knowledge
The first floor of the venue sees the return of the dedicated Sharing Knowledge zone with industry panels and seminars. There will be four industry panels with leading industry representatives discussing sustainability within the dairy sector. The hour-long panels will run alongside four seminar presentations, sponsored by Volac, with speakers covering key dairy industry subjects that inform the audience and create topical discussion.
Timetable:
10.00am – Seminar – Volac International
10.30am – Industry Panel – Sustainable Farms
11.30am – Seminar – NWF Agriculture
12.00pm – Industry Panel – Sustainable Finance
1.00pm – Seminar – Crystalyx
1.30pm – Industry Panel – Sustainable Employment
2.20pm – Seminar – Lely
2.45pm – Industry Panel – Sustainable Dairy Market
The external areas at the International Centre will feature the ever-popular practical demonstrations on calf anatomy painting as well as foot trimming and knife sharpening.
Scarsdale Vets, from Derbyshire, will present their innovative and engaging demonstration using paint to visualise and understand calf anatomy. Throughout the day there will be the ‘Beneath the Black and White’ calf painting and the Scarsdale Vets team will use paint to assist the understanding of calf health and welfare.
Tim Carter returns with practical demonstrations on foot trimming, blocking and knife sharpening. The qualified team of independent foot trimmers will demonstrate the key to the success of any task is having the right tools for the job.
They will also highlight The Cattle Hoof Care Standards Board, a self-funding non-profit organisation aimed at improving the health, welfare and mobility of the national herd, by ensuring its members promote, achieve and maintain a recognised and validated standard of cattle hoof care.
Internally by the Hall 3 cattle stalls will be the NBDC Breed Village where members of the NBDC Classification team will run Type Classification and Linear Scoring demonstrations for the Ayrshire, Jersey and Holstein breeds. In conjunction with the Linear Scoring demonstration, a Virtual Cow demonstration will run on a TV screen. Virtual Cow is an educational tool which graphically illustrates the linear scale for cow conformation traits. This allows for an improved understanding of dairy cow conformation and easy visualisation of anatomical differences within each trait across the linear scale.
Competitions
To showcase new products, exhibitors have had the opportunity to enter the New Product Competition. This competition looks for the most innovative or influential new products on the market and the shortlisted entries will be displayed in the concourse and judged during the morning of the event by representatives from IDEXX who sponsor the competition.
UK Dairy Day will also recognise the hard work that goes into planning, designing and building the fantastic display of trade stands. The trade stand competition will see judges from sponsor Hettle Andrews review the exhibition areas and award prize cards for the best small internal trade stand, best medium internal trade stand, best large internal trade stand and best external trade stand.
In addition to the cattle classes judged throughout the day, there will also be awards made for best presented and tidy lines, Holstein UK premier herd, premier breeder banner, premier exhibitor banner, and Harold Sneesby Award.
