Having grown up on a small dairy farm in North Wales, I knew from an early age that dairy farming was going to be a real passion for me in life, even though I was often discouraged from taking it up as a career by friends and family.
At the age of 15 I set myself the heady goal of one day milking 1,000 cows. When I shared this goal with the people around me at that time, I was met with many a sarcastic laugh or negative comment.
In 2014 I left collage at 18 and, along with my father, looked to grow the family dairy business by taking on a share farming opportunity locally, where we grew our herd from 50 to 150 cows.
During this time, I learned about ‘cow leasing' and started to grow a herd of my own within my father's business, which started off with one rather useless under-grown Jersey cow and soon after I grew this to a herd of 12.
Sadly, the challenging times of 2015-2016 were a perfect storm that my father and I had not prepared for, leading to my father deciding to consolidate his business back to the home farm in 2017, leaving myself and my cows with few prospects at the time.
It was at this point I felt as though the dream of milking my 1,000 cows could not have felt further away.
Luckily, it was around this time I took my first motorway trip down the M6 to meet with Tom Rawson for an interview. At some point during this meeting, I remember sharing my dream with Tom and was pleasantly surprised to find that he was the first person who didn't laugh.
Fast forward six years and despite facing numerous challenges and lessons I can now proudly say that with the help from everyone at Evolution Farming, and many others, I have now achieved my goal and am now managing 1,070 spring calving dairy cows plus followers at Houghton Lodge farm in Leicester.
Of these cows, I now own 370, which I am leasing back to the enterprise.
The farm comprises 500 hectares of grass and has a team of seven full-time staff plus relief. I also rent some pasture land from my grandmother on which I raise all of my replacements.
This year has been an extremely varied year for us at Houghton Lodge, providing many challenges, including downward pressures from the milk price and a cold and wet late spring affecting pasture quality, grass utilisation and calf health.
This was followed by an extremely hot and dry start to the breeding season, a fluctuation in staff numbers for various reasons and, on top of this, growing our herd by calving more than 400 heifers, which took a fair effort from the team to break into the milking routine.
However, our team prevailed in delivering an overall positive result in calving and breeding and, although we have taken a hit on our average yield, sacrificing a projected 500 litres per cow on last year, we have ended up adding another 1% on to our six-week in-calf rate, which is now up to 74%.
The second half of the season brought way above average summer grass growth from July onwards. This, coupled with good pasture management, careful cost control and great husbandry skills from the team, means we are set to potentially deliver our year ‘on budget', despite all the challenges faced.
On top of this we have also drastically increased our forage stocks to hopefully aid future potential droughts and have grown a healthy looking generation of more than 300 youngstock.
For more dairy farmer blogs click here
