Like many dairy farmers across the country, Connah's deeply concerned about labour shortages. The competition for good people is fierce. And that’s just the start of it.

“Staff retention is huge. If you can get good workers that’s great but it’s being able to keep them as well.”

Dairy farm jobs are notorious for long, hard-work, high-pressure days, with little, to no time off. 

As a result, farmers like Connah are recognising the need to invest and create an atmosphere on farm that supports and re-ignites a passion for the job. 

Connah says Halter is helping.

“Halter enables you to get away when you want to, but it also means you don’t need to get away as much. With Halter, I’ve been able to invest more of myself into the farm which means I actually want to stay. I can maintain what I’m doing, at a level without feeling like this is ‘too much’.”

Off the back of having Halter, Connah has adopted an 18-month lactation season, something that the team had always wanted to try but was hesitant due to the significant investment of capital, time and unique management required.

Without Halter, Connah would have had to invest in a high-cost infrastructure such as a feed pad. Adding to this is the management of a feed pad which requires additional labour in an already labour-intensive business.

Instead, Connah’s investment in Halter means his girls now get a well-deserved rest and he can manage their feed remotely, requiring fewer hours from the team.

“[Halter has] allowed us to improve the system, do things differently, change things to suit the farm better and to take the pressure off us and the cows.”

“With the 18 months, pasture allocation and utilisation are critical. Having the accuracy of giving the cows exactly what they want or need means there’s no wastage or shortage each day - it takes the guesswork out of it.” 

In turn, this has led to better welfare and production results. Prior to Halter Connah’s farm held a record of 126,000 solids. Armed with Halter, Connah is looking at increasing that figure to 150,000.

Connah’s cows are high producing — typically this means they are harder to get in calf leading to high empty rates. 

“We’ve consistently had quite high empty rates. We always found our top cows that were producing over 3 kgMS would cycle to begin with at the start of mating, then we wouldn't see anything from them for the rest of mating, then they’d show up empty.”

Having Halter means Connah’s now able to pick up on silent heats or slight changes in behaviour, enabling him to act fast to improve conception.

“With Halter, we’re able to pick up on things we would normally miss, for us it’s massive. Looking into next mating we’re pretty confident we won’t have to do any pre-mating heats like tail painting or anything like that.”