Life on our Suffolk dairy farm: July

Dispatch room

The drought is really having an effect on the grass growth out in the fields and the cows are running out of feed. Unfortunately, we’ve had to open up a silage bunker, which would normally be fed in the winter months, in order to have enough food for the herd. This impacts the milk and the cream levels are going up once again, which has a positive outcome for cheese and butter productions.

Lots of activity is happening around the farmyard with the new extension of the cheese making facilities going live. We now have a much bigger maturing space to allow us to make more cheese during the busy period leading up to Christmas. It’s also helped improve our packing area where Catharine, Sam and Athena are now working in a much larger space (see image above showing our old packing area).

We are extending our cow yards for the winter with a better feeding area for the cows to dine from. We have also upgraded our electricity supply to the farm, which will allow us to put up more solar panels in the future and give some of the surplus electricity we create back to the grid.

With most of the grass silage and hay making finished we are now focusing on harvest. We will soon be combining our fields of wheat and triticale along with bringing thousands of tonnes of straw into the barns for winter bedding.

Molly and the dairy team are starting plans for the autumn calving cows. In little over a month we will start to see all the little calves being born. That’s when things start to get really busy!