President's Award for academic paper

Posted 21 November 2012

An academic paper by Harper Adams Senior Lecturer, Simon Marsh, was recognised at the British Cattle Veterinary Association Annual Congress, at the weekend.

The event took place at the Telford International Centre where Principal, Dr David Llewellyn, accepted the President’s Award on behalf of Simon.

Simon had presented the paper entitled ‘Suckled calf production – achieving top 1% performance’ at last year’s Congress.

He said: “The paper was based on my work with a commercial suckled calf producer in Derbyshire, who achieves top 1% performance with total focus on the ‘Golden Triangle’ of genetics, nutrition and health.

“The herd uses top 1% index easy calving Charolais bulls on Limousin x Holstein-Friesian cows. The calves are finished on good quality silage and cereal home mix and last year the bulls recorded a mean carcase weight of 462kg at just 440 days old. This equates to a daily carcase, not live weight gain, from birth to slaughter of exactly 1.00kg which is phenomenal performance.

“My work with the farm was featured in monthly articles in the Farmers Weekly during 2011 and the farm regularly hosts student visits. I am extremely pleased and proud to have been given the President’s Award for my paper.”

The 2012 BCVA Congress provided a programme of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) around the topic of ‘Healthy Cattle, Healthy Food and Healthy People.’

It was opened by Lord Rooker, Chairman of the Food Standards Agency, who gave an overview of British food safety matters.