Wolfhall Farm

Follow Wolfhall Farm if you are interested in:

• Evaluating current farm practices to maximise profitability
• Starting or continuing your journey to increasing farm productivity
• Maximising effectiveness of drought management
• Increasing cow and heifer performance through milk from forage

Overview

Herd Manager, Anthony Mitchell and farm owner, Tom Blanchard, run a 600-cow, crossbred herd on a split-block calving system in Wiltshire.

Our farm

Wolfhall Farm is a mixed farming business with dairying at its heart.

The 600-ha farm has a 175-ha grazing platform with Italian grass, herbal leys, maize, fodder beet and lucerne grown to support the dairy. Wheat, barley and oilseed rape are also grown.

Our herd

This split block-calving herd of 600 cows average 5,600 litres per cow per year at 4.8% butterfat and 3.7% protein. The cows at Wolfhall are milked using a 36/72 swingover parlour.

Currently, the farm is equally weighted to spring and autumn blocks, but they want to focus more on autumn block calving to decrease the impact of drought on the farm through limited stocking rates.

The decision to crossbreed was initially made to get a cow that suited their system better.

The farm has gone back to using LIC breeding in their herd to help maximise milk from forage, increasing milk solids while still coping well with the environment, including outwintering.

The autumn block is served mainly to sexed semen, with beef semen only used in the spring block. The beef calves are reared to six months of age before being sold in stores.

Our journey

Fifteen years ago, Tom returned from university to his family farm, which at the time was 900 acres, but has now expanded to 1,700 acres.

This farm originally milked 150 Holsteins and used the rest of the land to grow crops. The farm now milks approximately 600 crossbred cows alongside rearing beef youngstock and arable farming.

During their Strategic Dairy Farm journey, Wolfhall Farm would like to further develop the farm with the support of the steering group.

They would also like to focus on increasing average milk yields from 5,600 to 6,500 per cow.

News

Holistic view on slurry – From storage to field with Wolfhall Farm

Three new Strategic Dairy Farms