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Whitewool Farm
Name:
Will and Jamie Butler
Location:
Hampshire
About Whitewool Farm
- Joined the Strategic Dairy Farm network in spring 2024
- Autumn block-calving
- Yields of 10,000 litres per cow
- 1,254 acres, with approximately 590 acres used for arable farming
Follow Whitewool if you are interested in:
- Maximising productivity on your farm
- Starting or continuing your journey to net zero through regenerative farming
- Maximising cow and heifer performance through genetics and genomics
- Enhancing your farm’s efficiency through grass utilisation and feed
Overview
Owned by second-generation farmers, Will and Jamie Butler, their farm is made up of 400 Holstein-Friesian cows on an autumn block-calving system.
Whitewool also has a number of diversified activities such as glamping, fly fishing, corporate days, clay shooting and self-storage.
Our farm
Whitewool Farm is made up of 1,100 acres of owned land and 145 acres of rented land.
The land use is mixed between forage cropping (grass, maize and wholecrop) and 600–650 acres of combinable crops (mainly wheat).
Both sectors of this farm work hand-in-hand, through growing forage crops, managing soils, slurry and fertiliser, and ensuring the overall business is focused on being the most productive farm in the UK.
Jamie and Will have been farming regeneratively for the last 3–4 years, making the most of natural resources.
They are looking for opportunities to build biology on the farm and one of the ways they are doing that is by experimenting with a new method of intensively building fungi and microbes, called a Johnson-Su Bioreactor.
This is a simple system that over 12 months builds a microbial-rich substrate that can be applied as a soil stimulant, either as a seed dressing or through a sprayer. Early experimentation has seen a noticeable difference in tillering and plant vigour in wheat.
Our herd
This autumn block-calving herd of 400 Holstein-Friesians averages 10,000 litres per cow per year at 4.09% butterfat and 3.25% protein.
The cows at Whitewool Farm are milked in a 24:48 swing over the parlour, supplying the milk to Suppling Muller Sainsbury’s.
Whitewool’s herd is grazed between March and October, with the view of getting as much milk from forage as possible.
Our journey
Second-generation farmers, Will and Jamie, grew up on the farm after their grandparents purchased it in 1930. It was rented out for a while and then resold to the family in 1953.
The farm originally had cows, sheep, and pigs. In the early 1990s, they started diversifying the farm by adding fly fishery. By the late 1990s, they stopped farming pigs and introduced their self-storage unit.
Jamie and Will leaned more towards a sustainable approach when their non-farming businesses demanded it. They then realised that if done right, there were huge savings to be made by focusing on this area and they are now adopting this approach across the whole farm.
During its journey as a Strategic Dairy Farm, Whitewool Farm would like to be the most productive dairy farm in the UK – naturally.
For them, this means increasing cow longevity, improving soil health, optimising feed usage, reducing repairs, improving team systems and improving cow comfort.
“It’s important to us at Whitewool Farm that during our Strategic Dairy Farm journey we highlight our ‘Farm Focus Areas’ which are the drivers for all of our businesses: enhancing natural assets, optimising inputs and delivering fulfilling experiences” – Jamie Butler.
