From Colostrum to Weaning: Building performance in surplus lambs

Drawing on an extensive academic background, plus more than a decade of young ruminant feed industry commercial experience, Dr Jessica Cooke has championed high quality milk replacer development under the Volac brand for more than 15 years.

Jessica grew up on a mixed farm in Sussex before heading north after school to the University of Leeds to study zoology, graduating with a first-class BSc Hons degree. She then moved onto the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) in London, where she completed a PhD studying the impact of calf development on the subsequent fertility, productivity, and longevity of dairy cows. This was followed by a three-year period of postdoctoral research into dairy cow fertility, also at the RVC.

Since joining Volac International in 2010 as their young animal technical specialist, Jessica has continued to forge research links with leading Universities, agricultural colleges and other important industry stakeholders – most recently leading a keynote PhD study at the University of Liverpool into the impact of calf development and growth on lifetime dairy cow performance. Throughout her career, she has published more that 30 research papers on calf and heifer rearing.

Brought up on a 900-cow family dairy farm on the banks of the river Tamar in Cornwall and now married to another milk producer who farms further up the river at Stoke Climsland, near Launceston, Stacey is a passionate advocate for dairying. After leaving school, Stacey studied nutrition at Bath University before moving into education and becoming a food technology teacher. But the lure of a motivational career change back to her dairy farming roots back in 2014 – via a professional, advisory-based career opportunity in young animal nutrition with Volac Milk Replacers Limited – proved too difficult to turn down.

 Stacey is an experienced customer account manager and communicator, regularly attending farmer shows and knowledge-transfer events to share her in depth understanding of sustainable youngstock rearing. The principle of automatic feeding is a particular interest and she has drawn on her in-depth knowledge of the Forster Technic computerised machine to help many farmers make the most of their investment in this area.

Katie Denholm works at the University of Glasgow as a farm animal senior academic clinician with a special interest in dairy calves and colostrum management.  She joined the team from New Zealand where she worked as a herd health consultant and dairy vet for Anexa Animal Health in Hamilton in the North Island.  She has a Masters in Veterinary Epidemiology with a research interest and PhD in calf health and colostrum management.  Katie is experienced in teaching undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as farmers and other vets; motivating people to make changes to improve farm profitability and sustainability.