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I farm: “With my father William, mother Florrie and my brother Christopher. We have 190 cows, 350 ewes, 80 hoggets and rear dairy-beef calves to slaughter as well.”
Cows: “We are new entrants to dairy since 2020. The herd is a mixture of spring and autumn calvers. They are out full-time now but grass is pretty slow.”
Robots: “We’ve had robots from the get-go and the cows get milked 2.5 times a day across three grazings. They are also getting 5kg/day of a 19% dairy nut.”
Breeding: “We synchronised 21 heifers this week with sexed-semen, we’ve done this since we started dairying and it has worked really well, as our herd is predominantly young. Breeding will begin on 25 April for the cows. We have four Hereford bulls mopping up and have a few Angus straws in the tank as well if we decide to use them.”
Calving: “We just have 12 cows left to calve now and we started the last week in January.”
Sheep: “We have Texel, Belclare and Suffolk cross ewes. We lambed 89% of the ewes in the first 17 days of lambing, it has gone very well. We are hoping that they will all be finished in the next two weeks. They are all out on grass too, we’d be hoping for a burst of heat now to get grass growing.”
Fertiliser: “We’ve spread fertiliser on silage ground and have another bit to spread on grazing ground. We’ve been following the cows with the trailing shoe.”
Maize: ”We are going to spray off 20ac this week and sow maize for the first time for fodder. Maize is good feed and the scheme was there so we said why not.”
Quotable quote: “Working with my family makes it all the more worthwhile.”
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