Page 81 - Shorthorn Magazine

FARM FACTS
• Eddlestow Hall Farm has land rising to 300 metres (990ft)
• The farm is home to the Amber herd of pedigree Dairy Shorthorns from which the first animal was registered to the Society in 1944
• The land extends to 202 hectares (500 acres) of which about 81ha (200 acres) is in the arable rotation, 56.5ha (140 acres) is temporary grassland and about 64.5ha (160 acres) is permanent grassland
• The arable rotation includes oats, barley, wheat and temporary grass
• The herd comprises 150 cows in the milking herd, with a further 200 followers including replacements and surplus females which are usually sold privately or through Leek market. On average six bulls are sold privately each year
• Cows average 8,600 litres at 3.18% protein and 4.5% butterfat
• Milk is sold on a liquid contract to Muller
“They are consistent for both type and milk yield and have also performed well in the show ring in the past.”
The family used to show and achieved considerable success in the ring, securing the breed championship at the Royal Show four times and winning at the Cheshire and other county shows.
Now they limit their showing to the Society’s regional herd competition where this year they won the best heifer in milk category with Amber Princess Anne 143.
James and his wife, Julie, are joined at Eddlestow by Josh Neville, who has been working at the farm since he was 11 years old and now juggles his time there with studying at Harper Adams University.
Josh shares their passion for cows and is clearly viewed as indispensable and part of the farm’s future by his senior counterparts.
Although breeding exceptional pedigree animals is what the farm is renowned for, it is a commercial dairy farm and the cows reflect this.
James says: “We blend some Red Holstein with the Shorthorn and, over time, yields have increased from an average of 5,500 litres to 6,000 litres achieved 40 years
ago to our current herd average of 8,600 litres.
“This is also partly down to modern feeding methods where we are using diet feeders and have sown new leys.
“I think one of the secrets to our success is we produce most of our own ration here on the farm so we are not dependent on bought in feed.
“We grow oats, barley and wheat, which we mill and mix ourselves and just add in some soya protein and minerals as well as grass silage.
“On the arable land, we grow a short-term Italian ryegrass ley in the arable rotation as a break crop to help control grass weeds.
“We mow this every month through the summer and typically take four or five crops which we buffer feed to the milking herd when they come in to be milked.
“The silage from these one-year leys is very high quality and we find it helps to iron out any fluctuations in nutrition from the grazed grass so maintains yield.
“This is important here as the cows would struggle to yield so well from some of our steeper, rough grazing fields,” James says.
Across the rest of the farm, longer-term leys are grown, these are ploughed up and a crop of wheat grown there for a year before they are re-seeded back to grass.
Grazing
The grazing platform, situated around the farm is the ‘very difficult’ fields, according to James.
“The fields are generally on heavy clay and are steep, with many land drains. We do re-seed them occasionally, but it is not an easy task and they need a lot of maintenance.
“We aim to turn the milking herd out by April 20, with the youngstock usually out before then.
“This year was a challenge, because of the wet, cool start but we have a good network of tracks and the cows need to be able to walk a long way, so good mobility is important to us.”
Heifers generally calve down at between 27 and 30 months and although a few will calve earlier. Mick says a younger calving age is not something they strive for.
“The heifers would need pushing so much if we were to try and calve them all at two years. We have a few which calve then as if they have grown on really well, we will serve them a bit earlier,” he adds.
Calves are kept in individual pens for the first two to three weeks of their life and then go into groups in pens.
James says their calf feeding regime results in a slightly later weaning date. “We wean at eight to ten weeks; we keep them on milk a week or so longer because we do not feed a rearer nut. Instead, we mix our own calf creep feed from our own milled mix.”
When they are housed, they are introduced to cubicles and James says this means they are never a problem
when they join the milking herd in the main cubicle shed.
At any one time, about 100 dairy cross beef bulls will be housed at the farm and finished on the home-grown ration.
“We use male sexed beef semen from Blue, Angus and some Limousin bulls on the lower end of the milking herd. This works well for us as otherwise if use conventional beef semen, we end up with small numbers of females which are then more difficult to manage.
“We finish the bulls at about 550kg liveweight and sell them through Bakewell market.”
Looking to the future, James mentions genomics as something they will certainly look at although there is currently limited data for the Shorthorns.
Jame says: “We have to be open to these advancements and we are conscious that one of the issues with the Shorthorn is the limited choice of sires. We have looked further afield for our sires, but we are looking for a grazing animal and this guides our choice of genetics. We are striving for continual improvement and the best genetics and feeding will help us achieve this.”
Articles by the Dairy Farmer Photographs by Jon Eveson
Shorthorn 81