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Roger Evans is a well-known figure within the dairy industry. He was chairman of First Milk in 2003/04 and is noted for his award winning agricultural writing. Following on from feedback that you would like to read more stories about First Milk producers, we have decided to launch a new section where Roger will visit a member each month and share his unique insights.

It was in the Spring of 2003 that I first visited Stephen and Clare Bland at Abbott Lodge, near Penrith in Cumbria. It was post Foot and Mouth but the outbreak itself was very fresh in everyone’s minds. I spoke to a lot of farmers and their families that had been affected at that time and it was not difficult to detect the trauma of the experience.

When I was there this week, the ice-cream parlour was thronging with visitors, both young and old and Clare told me that they have 35,000 visitors a year.

Stephen’s real pride is his herd of Jerseys. When they restocked they bought 90 and they have only bought 30 since then but have built up to a herd of 250 cows.

There are 10 cows in the herd that are in their tenth lactation or more and the herd averages 6612 litres at 5.4% butterfat and 3.9% protein.

Stephen is active within the breed society both as a judge and showing his own cattle.

If you ask any of the First Milk creamery managers what they look for as the ideal constituent value milk for cheese yield, they will tell you it’s casein they are after.

A 3.5% protein milk will give 2.73% casein - and the higher the better. The creameries can cope with high fat because they can adjust for that.

Stephen has developed a huge enthusiasm for the Jersey breed but he is under no illusion that the breed must stand on its own feet commercially.

He showed me the importance of the breed in cheese production in the USA. If you were to ask the owners of the Hilmar Cheese Company of Texas what milk they wanted in their factory, they would tell you that they wanted a mix of 70% Holstein milk and 30% Jersey. Their Jersey cows are judged on ‘cheese yield dollars’. The future of the Jersey breed would seem to be into specialist products or into cheese plants.

So what of the future at Abbott Lodge farm?

Stephen wants to consolidate the herd at 26O to breed an even better cow and to produce milk that fits the marketplace – in this case, The Lake District Creamery. If the creameries want more of this sort of milk, then we must all get on and produce it.