Lochdale Holsteins third in Lactanet dairy performance awards

An Ontario farm had the third highest dairy herd performance index in Lactanet’s annual national awards.

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Lochdale Holsteins, of Alexandria, Ont., had a score of 969. The farm is owned by David, Anne Marie and Andrew MacMillan. They milk 78 cows in a pipeline system.

Lactanet is the national herd recording and dairy farm data management organization and the winners are taken from their customers.

Why it matters: Benchmarks help farms learn how they are performing compared to their peers.

Top place over was taken by Ferme Drahoka Inc. of Kamouraska, QC, owned by Francis and Sylvain Drapeau with a score of 988. They milk 119 cows in a pipeline set up. Second place, at 976 herd performance index points, was Sunny Point Farms Ltd., of Densmore Mills, Nova Scotia, owned by Phillip and Lori Vroegh. Sunny Point also was second in the country in 2022.

The composition of the list changes each year and from 2022 to 2023 is no different.

In 2022, Ontario farms made up seven of the top 10, and all of them were milking in freestall barns, either with parlours or robots.

In 2023, five of the top 10 are from Ontario, with Lochdale coming from off the top 25 in 2022 to the top three in 2023.

Three of the top five herds in 2023, milk using pipelines, whereas in 2022 nine of the top 10 herds were housed in freestalls and milked either in parlours or by robots.

The other Ontario herds in the top 10 include Rosenhill Farms of St. Albert, Ont. in seventh, FriedRidge Dairy of Plattsville in eighth, Dutchdale Farms of Lucknow in ninth and Full Send Farms/Stewardson Dairy of Thedford, last year’s top Ontario herd, at 10th.

There are six herd performance indicators that make up the HPI including milk value, udder health, age at first calving, calving interval, herd efficiency and longevity. If there is a tie, it is broken by which herd has the top milk value.