New year, fresh start, better teams. We sit down with Becky Miles from Real Success to map out how UK dairy farms can turn a good hire into a long-term teammate. Not with grand gestures, but with the basics done well: a thoughtful first day, honest safety culture, and the kind of everyday communication that prevents small problems becoming big ones.

We unpack a practical onboarding blueprint you can copy tomorrow—10 a.m. start, warm welcome, terms and conditions on the table, health and safety brief, PPE issued, WhatsApp groups explained, and a mentor assigned. Becky introduces the accountability ladder to shift behaviour from blame and excuses to ownership and solutions, and explains why leaders must provide time, tools, skills, and knowledge before they demand results. We dig into vision, mission, and values, turning them from corporate wallpaper into simple, lived behaviours around animal handling, safety, and respect.

From there, we get specific: weekly breakfast huddles with KPIs, sharing milk tickets and cell count trends, giving credit when it’s due, and handling conflict with cool heads and open questions. We challenge the myth that pay is the main lever, showing how flexible rotas, visible leadership, and small rituals—like a team breakfast after milk recording—carry more weight. Training stays central, with smart ways to protect investment, because the real risk is an untrained person who stays. We also tackle facilities and first impressions; a bright, tidy parlour and fit-for-purpose kit speak louder than any slogan.

If you’re aiming to reduce churn, lift morale, and get more done with less drama, this conversation offers concrete steps and language you can use with your team today. Subscribe, share with a fellow farmer, and leave a review with one retention tactic you’re going to try this month.

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For more information about our podcast visit www.chewinthecud.com/podcast or follow us on Instagram @chewinthecudpodcast. ChewintheCud Ltd is also on Facebook & LinkedIn. You can email us directly at podcast@chewinthecud.com

What really makes a cow go lame, and why did it take so long to change our minds? We sit down with Professor Jon Huxley—raised on a Welsh dairy, now leading Massey University’s vet school in New Zealand—for a candid tour through research that reshaped mastitis control, lameness prevention, and fresh cow care.

Jon shares the story behind teat sealants becoming a cornerstone of selective dry cow therapy, showing how solid trials helped cut antibiotic use without compromising udder health. We then tackle the big pivot in lameness thinking: moving beyond the old acidosis-laminitis narrative to the digital cushion, body condition, and the brutal role concrete plays in claw horn lesions. The result is a practical blueprint—protect condition around calving, improve surfaces and cow flow, and trim with function in mind.

Treatment gets equal airtime. Randomised trials demonstrate why NSAIDs matter for lame cows, reducing inflammation and pain to speed recovery. Extend that approach to fresh heifers and the benefits often reach into second lactation. From there, we zoom out: are mastitis, metritis, ketosis, and lameness different faces of the same early lactation inflammatory stress? If the transition cow is the most fragile athlete on the farm, then feed space, comfort, calm routines, and energy balance are one system, not a checklist.

We also compare UK housed systems with New Zealand’s pasture-first dairying: longer walks on laneways, fewer hours on concrete, and lower lameness, but rising buffer feeding, new shelters, and tough conversations on nutrient leaching. Along the way, John explains how Massey’s hands-on facilities and the Kiwi “give it a go” mindset produce work-ready vets who can turn evidence into action.

Listen for clear, usable insights on mastitis prevention, lameness treatment, digital cushion management, underfoot design, and the transition period. If you want fewer sore feet, fewer sick fresh cows, and more sustainable milk, this conversation pulls the science onto the yard. Enjoy the ride—and if it helps, share it with a friend, subscribe, and leave a quick review to support the show.

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For more information about our podcast visit www.chewinthecud.com/podcast or follow us on Instagram @chewinthecudpodcast. ChewintheCud Ltd is also on Facebook & LinkedIn. You can email us directly at podcast@chewinthecud.com

Planning grazing by guesswork is costly; planning it with field‑level satellite insight is a game‑changer. We sit down with Chris Knight of Agribot to unpack how AI, radar, and atmosphere forecasting can measure pasture growth, cut labour, and help UK dairy farms make better, faster decisions.

Chris shares his journey from space and defence systems into agriculture, and why the most powerful shift is modelling each field on its own behaviour. Instead of relying on generic equations and perfect weather data, Agribot blends discrete atmospheric states with optical and radar satellites to read how your sward actually grows over time. Cloud cover isn’t a show‑stopper, because radar sees structure through the gloom. The result is consistent, frequent insight: near‑term dry matter estimates and multi‑week scenarios that flag above‑ or below‑average growth so you can adjust rotations, fertiliser plans, and buffer feeding before the pinch hits.

We also get honest about “accuracy.” Plate meters are useful, but they’re not a gold standard. The win here is consistency and context: a system you can calibrate to your farm that shows change early and keeps watching every field. That opens a bigger conversation about metrics. Should we keep chasing kilos of DM per hectare, or shift towards usable grazing days, megajoules per hectare, or even expected milk from pasture? Different systems need different lenses, and the same data can support them all. What matters is turning complex signals into decisions that raise milk from forage, protect margins, and reduce stress.

There’s a wider story too. With labour tight and weeks long, measurement is the job that slips. Tools that save half a day a week without sacrificing control can lift farmer welfare as much as farm performance. Chris’s team has kept the work mission‑led with support from Innovate UK and Horizon Europe, proving models before monetising and partnering with early adopters to refine accuracy. If you’ve wondered whether satellites can truly help you manage grass in a cloudy country, this conversation gives you the how, the why, and the next steps.

Enjoyed this? Follow and subscribe, share it with a mate who still plate‑meters every paddock, and leave a quick review so more dairy folks can find the show.

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For more information about our podcast visit www.chewinthecud.com/podcast or follow us on Instagram @chewinthecudpodcast. ChewintheCud Ltd is also on Facebook & LinkedIn. You can email us directly at podcast@chewinthecud.com