Long gone are the days of milking cows by hand. The main dairy breed used today is the Holstein Friesian, with a few Jersey and Ayrshire herds scattered throughout the country. The old dual purpose, beef and milk, Shorthorn cow now plays the smallest of role in the dairy industry. Hence the EU has introduced quotas to try to keep production at a level where the price can stay quite high to give farmers a good profit. With greater number of cows there is an increased reliance on fertiliser to ensure that farmers have adequate grass for their cows to eat.
Fertiliser can be detrimental to the environment in terms of habitat loss and watercourse pollution.
To this end farmers are seeking to ensure that they do not allow fertiliser into hedgerows where it causes the wild flowers to die out, and to ensure that they use the fertilisers in conditions which have the least risk of causing a watercourse pollution incident. Main Features Working farm paddock which may contain grazing dairy cows. The building in the background is the dairy where the cows go each day to be milked. If cattle are grazing note how they wrap their tongues around a tuft of grass and pull it up. This is different to sheep which bite the grass off with their teeth.