Claire Eastham
DAIRY Talk
Claire Eastham farms with her husband Martyn in Dorset, where they milk 120-spring calving cows. After gaining knowledge and experience working for other businesses, the couple started their own dairy farming journey in 2015 by taking on a share farming agreement before progressing to their current county council farm.
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We were thrilled our first home-reared heifers were 100% in-calf this year
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hile writing this the world has gone mad as we’re seeing rising prices, shortages and mass panic. I must say I think the big corporations are driving a lot of it. Diesel was at £1.55 at the pumps this morning, which suggests someone has increased their profit margin quickly. At the first meeting of the new season for the Dorset Grassland Society, we welcomed speaker Cathal McAleer, who discussed how to maximise outputs while reducing synthetic inputs, and if it were only for cost reasons. I can only see this as the way forward. We are always the first to be squeezed and last to be rewarded at the bottom of the chain. We have done well as an industry to shift and adapt to reduce production costs, but with a milk price the same as 25 years ago, I do feel a real change coming. Farmers haven’t been subsidised for years; everyone has had that subsidy, in the form of cheap food. Without it, costs to the consumer should, and will, rise. Consumers need to evaluate what is important to them. This may well, finally, be the time in which nutritious food is valued, and I believe eating as close to the soil as possible is sustainable.
Lab-grown The processes which products go through to become empty calories and ‘lab-grown’ meat full of synthetics are only here for one reason – you guessed it – money in the pockets of the big corporations. On-farm we have finally installed the first of our rainwater harvesting system and hopefully the Rural Payments Agency will soon say we can have four more 10,000-litre tanks on a new agreement under the Capital Grant element of the Countryside Stewardship scheme, as we are in a high priority catchment. I am hopeful this will reduce our water bill by half. I am also looking at ways to produce energy and am considering the feasibility of a small wind turbine, possibly roof-mounted. I feel the more we can reduce our reliance on anything bought-in, the more resilient we can be. It has been ridiculously dry here; we had 17mm of rainfall in August and 6mm to September 26, and
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we are now drier than we have ever been, including the drought years. We normally have a great flush of grass now and so it has caught us out. Cows have held on well, yielding 17 litres (1.46kg milk solids) until mid-September, but have just dropped back to 15 litres (1.29kg milk solids), feeding 3kg. We were thrilled our first home-reared heifers were 100% in-calf this year, with only two outside the first three weeks and all in-calf to Hereford. We have also bought-in some cows and will be milking 150 next season, which will be the peak for this farm. With 100 calving in the first three weeks, this should put us in a great position to build on fertility going forward and shorten our block from 12 weeks in the second season to 10 weeks in 2023. Buffer feeding has commenced, and I am going to sprinkle on various seeds to see what can establish this way to increase the diversity of our swards. Our 12 hectares (30 acres) of herbal leys have been established. Unfortunately, our normal min till method did not work this time, so the plough was used for the first time since we took the tenancy. I am very excited to see how these perform, how the cows yield on and off them and how our soils alter, so will be keeping close tabs. Third cut came in on top of the clamp and the red clover was baled to be used as high quality protein on the shoulders of the season. These did win at the local show, but just like the old beauty contest, we were the only entry.
NOVEMBER 2021
DF Nov p8 Dairy Talk Eastham KJ MB.indd 2
15/10/2021 09:17
