I’m fed up with talking about the weather, but I can console myself with the fact we have grabbed every opportunity so far and progress is not too bad.Plans laid for UK's largest dairy farm
PLANS for the UK’s largest dairy farm of 8,100 cows have been submitted to North Kesteven District Council in Lincolnshire.
The application from Reading Agriculture Consultants is for Nocton Dairies, owned by Peter Willes of Parkham Farms, North Devon who milks 2,000 cows in Devon and Lancashire; David Barnes who manages the Lancashire herd at Withgill, near Clitheroe, and Robert Howard, a local arable farmer.
They say it is planned to make the new unit ‘a flagship for the next generation of the UK dairy industry.’
It is hoped planning permission for the venture - on former arable land west of the B1188 at Nocton, south of Lincoln - will be sorted out by April and that the first cows will be milked this autumn.
They will fed on lucerne and crop by-products, bedded on sand, and the slurry will be immediately put through an anaerobic digester.
The planning application says the digester will produce 2 megawatts which is enough to power the dairy and more than 2,000 homes.
Nocton Dairies say some 21,000 surrounding acres are available for both growing feed and spreading digestate from the waste plant.
Forage for the cows will be produced by a co-operative of local farmers.
The farm will employ more than 80 local staff including a fully qualified full time vet.
It is also planned to have a visitor centre.
The applicants claim the dairy has been designed to ‘a level beyond the highest environmental and animal welfare standards ever seen in the UK.’
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Readers' comments (41)
Anonymous | 9 February 2010 11:00 am
A "fully qualified full time vet" ? Was the reporter who wrote this under the impression that there are partially qualified vets out there in practice?
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Rachael | 9 February 2010 3:44 pm
Here we go again, just another mega "farmer" who pushes the smaller ones out the way by shear financial power. Why do we need an 8000+ dairy!!!!???? I personally hope it doesn't get planning. However I do believe something HAS to be done to maintain/improve and develop britains farming industry. We have commercial sheep but dont own our own land so can't get help from the AMC to develop our business. It's a nightmare!
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Anonymous | 10 February 2010 8:40 am
Thousands of cows, kept inside 24/7, never seeing a blade of fresh grass? Sounds like battery farming to me, and we all know that many others farming sectors have been down that route and failed. Get the press and a tv chef in one of those sheds and the public will soon be demanding free range milk. I work in the dairy industry and know the sector is struggling but I just can't see intensive dairy farming is the way forward.
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SIMWNT | 10 February 2010 9:45 pm
No wonder the British public are fed up with battery farming, holstein cows bred and selected to look like Katie Price, Tits , skin and bone !!!!!!!!
No wonder cancer is on the increase, poor cows cant even graze fresh grass or eat herbs from the hedgerows.
God help us.
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marguerite moore | 12 February 2010 11:19 am
8,000 cows, kept indoors for life? not good. we only have a few cows but they go out on fine days & to watch them kick up their heels & scamper about, even the older ones is a sight to behold.
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Sean Cusack | 12 February 2010 11:57 am
I own and manage a grass based Dairy Farm with 90 cows in the Republic of Ireland. The proposed system is too capital and labour intensive to be profitable in the short term and there will be serious disease and welfare issues with milking that number of cows on one site.
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william from cornwall | 14 February 2010 8:17 am
I have worked on an intensive dairy farm where the cows are housed most of the time, and on a an extensive grazing farm where the cows are pretty much always outdoors, and believe me, the housed animals are by far the happier. Remember, cows will not give any milk if they are not happy. Good luck to the guys involved. I think they are making a massive statement on the future of the British dairy industry.
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Will off of Shropshire | 15 February 2010 11:35 am
hear hear william from Cornwall. Was also watching a programme on the BBC this morning which showed badgers being rehabilitated and released in to the wild 'to boost numbers'?! Quite how dairy farmers can continue to allow cows to graze with the current amount of disease being harboured by wildlife. Just thought I would point out that there is more to this argument than preventing cows from skipping round the fields - clearly consumers romantic visions of the countryside need to be updated. I believe that these plans are encouraging as there is evidently confidence somewhere in the sector.
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David Pigg | 15 February 2010 12:54 pm
At last some one has the nerve to take the uk dairy industry into the future,countries all over the world have developed large herd units where animal welfare is a lot greater than a lot of english dairy farms.Having a team of knowledgeable herd supervisors on the ground benifits the cows lifestyle greatly.With the current doldrums within the dairy industry farmers should be given there full support to this radical move forward.
Good luck to Nocton Dairies
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Anonymous | 16 February 2010 8:30 pm
I have had the pleasure of looking round David Barnes farm in Lancashire. When I went I was very sceptical about the welfare of 1800+ cows under one roof. I couldn't have been more wrong, the attention to detail was very good and the welfare standards were very high. They were far higher than many other farms I've been round.
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