Matthew Dugdale and Sarah-Jane Brooks tied the knot at Mitton Church on Sunday, September 16th. Matthew, now 29, has worked for the family firm since he left Nottingham University with a degree in Agriculture in 1999. Sarah-Jane is a creative consultant, specialising in co-ordinating wedding receptions, a skill she put to good use in preparing for her own celebrations. Matthew represents the sixth generation of the family to work in the firm since it was founded in Waddington in the mid 1800s. The happy couple live on Waddington Fell with their two Labradors, Henry & Storm.

RAW MATERIAL UPDATE

The market for compound feed raw materials continues to show little sign of slowing, and although during w/c 10th September Wheat prices did ease on three consecutive days it immediately regained much of the reduction on Monday 17th. This was further fuelled when the news came from Australia that their cereal harvest was 6million tonnes short due adverse weather.

Elsewhere in the markets other raw materials remain high with wheatfeed being quoted at £148pt in September, with a further rise for Oct-Apr. Palm Kernel is now trading at more than double last year’s price at £134pt. Spot Hi Pro Soya is £200pt, and Rapeseed meal at prices approaching £150pt. Even Soya Hulls are close to £150pt forwards, with spot loads carrying a £7- 10 premium for September.
As if all of this is not bad enough there is still the GM issue relating to US maize distillers to be resolved by Europe, this in itself has been responsible for some of the uncertainty in the market.

All of these prices along with similar rises in other materials means that unless cover is held raw materials are now around £60pt higher than last year!

Therefore further increases in compound feed prices are inevitable, although in our case hopefully not until January, it is still to early to predict the exact size of that rise.

Howard Blackburn
Managing Director
17/09/07

MARKET UPDATE

1st August 2007

Raw material markets continue to be very strong with nearly all raw material prices over 50% up on last year. This will lead to further increases in compound feeds, the full size of which will be determined once the new harvest is under way, and cereals released into the marketplace.

The position can be seen below:-

RAW MATERIAL COST COMPARISONS

N.B. These prices fluctuate daily and are not an offer price merely an indication of the market.

The floods in the east and south of the country have had a fundamental effect, although two days of sunshine and fine weather has seen forward wheat prices easing slightly. However no new crop cereals are been released into the market yet:

The current weather, along with climate change concerns are however proving a very convenient vehicle for food prices to be “talked up”, and the news that First Milk has claimed Force Majeure on August milk supplies will inevitably send reverberations throughout the milk industry, with the consequential higher prices for producers.
This can be already seen to be happening across the country with many producers currently serving notice with their Milk Company, and new marketing operations being started by ultra large milk producers. These new operators are now actively recruiting extra members and are reputably offering farm gate prices in the region of 30ppl.
It must be a concern that the increases in milk producer prices are reflected across the whole spectrum of farm food production, so that beef and sheep farmers too can gain a fair return – time will tell!

DC 321

Launch of our new product DC 321, for more information click here

FEED PRICES - ISSUES AND PROSPECTS (July )

The rapid realignment of world food prices is continuing at an unprecedented pace.

These changes are caused by a multitude of driving forces that all result in increased prices throughout the food chain.

Starting with food commodity prices – these have always risen and fallen, however currently these all continuing to rise on an almost daily basis. Driven in part by actual weather fluctuations, in part by fear of extreme weather predictions, and by the emerging economies of the world entering the market for commodities in vast amounts: Only recently China bought over 5 million tonnes of Soya beans from the US in a $2.8 billion dollar deal: Add to that the EU banning of Maize Gluten imports from the US due to fears of GM contamination, along with a worldwide rush into Biofuels the pressure on agricultural feed commodities is clear-and probably here to stay.

Therefore it is highly likely that over the next eighteen months at least, we are going to experience worldwide food price inflation that will have a massive impact on all countries. Leading in some parts of the world to a potential humanitarian disaster as poorer countries can no longer compete on world markets.

It is now widely forecast that food price inflation will be well over 6% globally, and this is likely to be a long term trend rather than a short term “blip”.

From all of this it is clear that high and rising animal feed prices are going to be with us for some time. The only solution is to continue to drive efficiency factors still further, with maximum output, whilst keeping a tight rein on all costs.

Dugdale Herd Health Package

A new dairy herd health package has been launched by Dugdale Nutrition to complement its Management for More than milk, M3 programme and to help farmers combat the three most common issues, fertility, lameness and mastitis. These combined with the associated loss of milk yield can be worth over £60,000 on a 100 cow herd.
Called Healthy Herd Planner, the initiative encourages farmers in the first instance to adopt a proactive approach by introducing the University of Edinburgh’s Dairy Herd Health and Productivity Service to monitor herd fertility, together with a computerised production and health recording system.
The package also introduces to diets Availa4, a protected mineral developed in the USA for high yielding herds, which contains a combination of zinc, copper, manganese and cobalt complexes essential to prevent lameness, encourage fertility, reduce mastitis incidence and improve yields.
In addition, Healthy Herd Planner urges producers to tackle lameness by adopting a focused footbath programme and introducing locomotion scoring, while mastitis can be curbed by including drying off treatments along with other timely measures.
“Attempting to maximise herd margin by exploiting yield potential is putting more and more herds under pressure and consequently increasing their vulnerability to fertility, lameness and mastitis,” says Dugdale Nutrition’s Donald Macleod.
“Introducing Healthy Herd Planner along with M3 will focus farmers’ minds on how to prevent each of these issues by fine tuning day to day management to subsequently maximise herd health and productivity and improve overall herd margins”.