Potstown Strategic Dairy Farm Launch

Join us for a webinar to celebrate the launch of our new, all year round calving, Scottish Strategic Dairy Farm, Potstown, Middlebie in Dumfries and Galloway.

Our hosts Gareth and David Owen will offer a virtual tour of their farm and provide an overview of its background, operations and the team involved.

We will also look at the farm’s technical performance against the optimal dairy system KPI’s and hear more about their long-term vision for the business.

Gareth and David will also take a critical look at the areas that have been identified for improvement over the next few years. These include exploring expansion opportunities and maximising the cow and heifer performance by looking at:

• Youngstock housing
• Calf health
• Improving fertility
• Improving mobility within the herd
• Maximising the use of genetics
• Maximising forage

About Potstown Farm

Potstown Farm is a 130 hectare farm with 22 ha of planted trees owned and managed by Gareth and David Owen alongside their father, Tom.

Currently 2 full time members of staff are employed, Kenny has been there for 5 years and brings 50 years of farm experience, he mainly does tractor work and general farm work.  Jodie has been there for 3 years and came from a non-farming background. She is mainly involved in calf feeding, routine tasks and robot work, working alongside Gareth and Tom Owen.  David also works as a consultant and supports the farm with business planning.

Potstown has expanded and changed directions over the last ten years with the introduction of 2 Lely robots in 2012. In 2014 a 246 cubicle shed was built with an additional 2 robots being fitted at that time.

They operate a fully housed, all year-round calving system comprising of 270 cows, this is made up of 170 holstein and 100 jersey cows.  In 2020 there was a change in direction for the business when they introduced the Jersey cattle to take advantage of their milk contract requirements. 

About Strategic Dairy Farms

Strategic dairy farms aim to help farmers learn from each other through regular on-farm meetings where key performance data is shared and what the best farmers are doing is showcased.

They form part of the Optimal Dairy Systems programme which aims to help dairy farmers reduce costs and increase efficiency by focusing on either a tight block or all-year-round calving system.

The growing network of strategic dairy farms have calculated KPIs for their enterprises which are shared at meetings and published online. These are physical and financial performance measures that are critical to success. Farmers can benchmark their businesses against these KPIs to help identify areas for improvement.

Follow the programme and find other local SDFs at www.ahdb.org.uk/farm-excellence