In early September a group of 40 people travelled to Austria for 3 days. The weather was very good as usual and the cows were magnificent.

We visited the AI Centre where we saw many of the top Bulls we sell here at SQF. The AI centre was celebrating its 20th anniversary whilst we were visiting. As part of the celebration we were treated to a wonderful meal, music and tested a few of Austria’s speciality drinks. A most enjoyable evening was had by all.

We then visited the Reid show. There was over 100 Fleckvieh cows on show, most of the young stock were from Genomic Bulls. The improvement in the udders with this breed year on year is remarkable. The older classes were dominated by the daughters from Willie and Rau. One of many impressive cows was the 12 000 kg Willie daughter Penelope out of a Rau Dam. She had style, size, great feet and legs with a super udder.

We went next day to visit 2 very impressive farms. The first one was an Organic farm milking 150 cows averaging 9500 lts. A very uniform herd of cows with great emphasis placed on fitness. His cows averaged 5.5 lactation. The week we visited he had sold 4 cull cows for 1800 euro each. With a milk price of 50ppl it was a very profitable farm. His other enterprise was 350 milking goats. The farm is in the process of putting up a new rotary parlour for the goats with the intention of expanding to 600. With the milk price for goats milk currently at £1 per litre this farmer could keep 10 goats for every 1 cow. The goats have a 2 year lactation and lasted 3 lactations. This meant he had to buy in replacements to help his expansion which were expensive at 600 euro each.

The second farm we visited was run Wolfgang Huemer. He had 45 cows with a herd average of 11000 lts at 4.13 and 3.56. They were all averaged sized cows with superb udders, feet and legs. The farmer had several bulls in AI with the most famous being Symposium. One of my favourite cows on show was the 13000 kg Gloecke. She was giving 60 lts per day 2 x after having twins in July.

The trip concluded with a boat trip down the Blue Dam which was truly breath taking. It was then homeward bound after the most enjoyable trip to date.