Gloucestershire: Lydney Park Farms strategic dairy farm launch

Join us for an on-farm meeting to launch our new strategic dairy farm, Lydney Park Farms, run by Gavin Green and Keith Davis.

The day will feature a tour of the farm and an opportunity to find out more from the team about their operation, performance figures and goals for the next three years.

What you will learn

• How the farm consistently grows around 12.5-15t dm/ha most years
• How the farm is planning to implement changes to their system to adapt to the principles of their consumer-conscious milk buyer
• How the low-cost grass-based systems can be best optimised to produce the four million litres of milk required to cover the high fixed costs

Keith Davis says:

"What is important to us at Lydney is that at the end of the three-year period, as a strategic dairy farm, we are a more focused, profitable and environmentally sustainable farm with a happy and motivated team."

About Lydney Park Farms

Lydney Park is part of the Bledisloe Estate, just outside the town of Lydney in Gloucestershire. It is managed by Gavin Green with retained consultant, Keith Davis, and team leader, Pawel Wegelewski. They milk 850 Jersey-cross cows, calving in a 10-week block that starts in mid-February. The herd are milked twice a day and produce around 4,750 litres. The farm extends to 640 hectares and the milking platform is around 2 m above sea level, beside the River Severn, protected by flood barriers.

Cows are grazed from calving to mid-November, when they are housed prior to being dried off in a block before Christmas.

Around 200 replacement heifer calves are reared on a separate unit until turnout. They are reared outside and outwintered on deferred grazing, plus big-bale silage for their first winter, and are housed in mid-December for their second winter, prior to calving.

Find out more about strategic dairy farms