Limpopo Dairy again takes top honours

Limpopo Dairy outside Makhado (Louis Trichardt) has just added another award to the whole bunch of others it has won in the past – that of Master Dairy Farmer of the Year for the Northern Region for 2014.

The award was presented to Mr Joubert Fourie, the director in charge of the dairy, on Thursday, 25 September, in Pretoria. This prestigious award, which puts him in the run for the national award as Master Dairy Farmer of the Year for 2014, is one of several garnered during the course of this past year. In March, the dairy received the award as National Dairy Farm of the Year for 2013, and a month or so later, it received another award. This time it was for its dairy goat milk products, awarded by the National Dairy Federation – a first place for its goat’s milk feta cheese and a second place for its goat’s milk yogurt.

To make the recent award even more special, Limpopo now holds the record for having won the regional award for three years running. It won the award for the first time in 2006, and then again in 2012, 2013 and 2014. The team responsible for winning this award scooped up wins in the categories for best dairy milk team (which focuses on hygienic milking practices), the best genetic dairy herd and the best somatic cell count (which looks at the health of the cows’ udders). To maintain this standard for close to 700 milk cows takes some doing and a dedicated team, headed by Mr Willa Vorster.

The country is divided into five regions, with the Northern Region comprising Limpopo, Gauteng, North West and Mpumalanga. After being named the winner of this region, Limpopo will compete with the winners in the four other regions for the national award for 2014. One advantage to this year’s competition is the fact that, contrary to the practice in the past, the judges for the competition will be the same throughout, which means that the same judges will see exactly the same things throughout the country. This makes the competition more balanced and fair.

Another difference this year is the fact that a lot of emphasis is placed on environmentally friendly practices that help to make the industry sustainable and leave a smaller carbon footprint. Once again Limpopo dairy is in the forefront with its practices of animal husbandry, ensuring the cows’ well-being by providing them with “creature comforts”, such as electronic backscratchers – a device which looks a lot like a bottle brush, which starts rotating automatically when a cow approaches it and gives it a pleasant back scratch.

The winners for the national master the 2015 Master Dairy Farmer of the Year will be announced in April 2015. If their recent successes are anything to go by, Limpopo Dairy just might make it two in a row. 

Date:02 October 2014

By: Nic Hoffmann

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