DMC Hollard Conference 2025

Reflecting on the 11th Annual DMC Conference

This year marked a significant milestone for Dairy Management Consulting (DMC) as we hosted our 11th Annual DMC Conference, proudly partnered for the first time with Hollard as our name sponsor. The event brought together leading minds in the dairy industry for two impactful days of learning, benchmarking, and celebration.

Held in Durbanville and Riversdale, the conference welcomed approximately 170 delegates in Durbanville and 130 in Riversdale. Among the attendees were some of South Africa’s top dairy farmers, along with key decision-makers including farm owners, managers, veterinarians, and nutritionists. Notably, 75% of the audience consisted of these core decision-makers, underscoring the conference’s relevance and value to the industry.

Celebrating 21 Years of DMC

This year also marked DMC’s 21st anniversary as a consultancy group. We are proud to now partner with around 150 farms, with average milking herd sizes ranging from 496 to 963 cows, depending on the production system. These herds produce between 18 L and 37 L of milk per cow, representing an asset value of R10 million to R20 million for the production herd alone. Monthly milk income across these farms ranges from R2.5 million to R7.7 million, with feed requirements for the milking herd alone reaching 290 to 770 tons per month. These figures reflect the economic significance of the dairy sector and the scale of operations we support.

Top Performers for Calf Rearing

Top Performers for SCC

Topics Covered at the 2025 DMC Conference

The conference featured expert-led sessions focused on improving herd performance, animal welfare, and economic sustainability. Highlights included:

Ventilation Strategies to Optimize Cow Cooling
Courtney Halbach, Outreach Specialist at The Dairyland Initiative, shared practical approaches to mitigating heat stress through effective barn ventilation and soaking systems. Her session emphasized the importance of airflow and microclimate control in maintaining cow comfort and productivity.
Modern Dairy Cow Time Budget and Cow Comfort
Lior Yaron explored how aligning farm routines with cows’ natural behaviors—such as lying, feeding, and ruminating—can enhance welfare and milk yield. His presentation provided actionable insights into optimizing daily time budgets for lactating cows.
The Maturity Problem: Building a Profitable Herd
Dr. Gavin Staley, Technical Service Specialist at Diamond V/Cargill, addressed the importance of calving mature heifers (“Platinum Heifers”) and retaining older cows (“Golden Girls”) to improve transition success, reduce disease, and increase profitability. He also outlined the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”—key challenges to herd maturity: transition disease, mastitis, lameness, and reproduction/production.
The Bovine Bucket List: A Framework for Dairy Success
Dr. Huw McConochie, Senior Dairy Technical Specialist at Zinpro Corporation, introduced the “Bovine Bucket List”—a practical framework for evaluating dairy operations. His talk emphasized five foundational pillars: hoof health, cow comfort, transition management, heifer rearing, and consistent routines. By aligning animal care with financial metrics like income-over-feed-cost (IOFC), Dr. McConochie demonstrated how farms can achieve measurable improvements in both herd vitality and profitability.

Driving Performance Through Benchmarking

A key feature of the DMC Conference is the recognition of top-performing farms in critical areas such as calf mortality and somatic cell count (SCC). This year, we showcased Holstein calf mortalities ranging from 1.0% to 3.7%, and Jersey mortalities from 0.7% to 3.6%—a testament to the dedication and precision of these farms.

For the first time, we also celebrated excellence in somatic cell count, a vital indicator of udder health and immunity. The top 10 farms achieved SCCs between 153,000 and 176,000, reflecting world-class management practices and a commitment to herd health.

A Platform for Progress

The DMC Conference continues to serve as a valuable platform for knowledge exchange, performance benchmarking, and direct engagement with industry leaders. We are deeply grateful to all our sponsors, whose support helps us deliver an event that drives progress and fosters excellence in dairy farming.

If you wish to learn more about what happened this year at DMC’s 11^th Annual Conference. Here we have DMC’s Co-owner, Justin Moolman, giving us a breakdown of everything that took place.