And we're off!


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Organic Dairy Farming at Woodhorn Group

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Today we toured The Woodhorn Group, which is an organic dairy farm with a composting site called Earth Cycle on the farm as well. They began farming in 1882 as a family run farm, and the current owner, John Pitts, is the fourth generation to run the farm. John diversified the farm in 1998 by adding a compost site that today recycles over 80,000 tons of garbage waste a year. The Woodhorn Group milks on average 250 cows twice a day in a sixteen cow parlor. This makes them a large farm in comparison to most organic dairy farms in England. However, they are currently only milking around 150 head as they are in their drying off period. They are different than a lot of farms in the United States that calve year round, as they calve in the fall. Cameron, one of the workers at Woodhorn Group, explained that this is because in England, milk prices are highest in the winter, so they try and increase their production starting in the fall to maximize their yearly income. The dairy indu...
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Mooooore Dairy

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Over the past few days we have had the opportunity to visit two different conventional dairy farms. The first one was Southview Farm. Southview is owned by Charlie Hughes, it is family farm that has been in the Hughes family since 1919. Charlie took over the farm in 2008 from his father, and has made several upgrades to the farm to make it as efficient as possible. The farm currently milks 100 head of Holstein-Friesian cattle (the typical breed found in England), but is working towards increasing the herd to 120 head.   Since Charlie has three kids of his own, he wants his farm to run as efficiently as possible, which is why he has adapted several technologies on the farm that are not usually found on a farm of his size. Southview Farms uses robotic milkers, automatic lighting, automatic calf feeders, and automatic feed scrapers. The robotic milkers allow the cows to go in and milk themselves whenever they want to be milked, which Charlie says is a minimum of twice a day. Sou...
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Touring Northfield Farm

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