About Our Cows

Happy animals

BREEDS & BREEDING

Our Herd

At Chestnutts Farm we have a herd of between 260 and 280. The herd is predominantly made up of Holstein Fresian cows but this is beginning to change though as since 2016 we have introduced a cross breeding programme known as Procross.

The ProCROSS system uses 3 breeds:

Holstein

This is what our herd is made up of originally and are known for their high production and good udders.

VikingRed

A composite breed that combines the three breeds – Finnish Ayrshire, Swedish Red and Danish Red. This breed brings fantastic health traits and slightly smaller stature.

Montbeliarde from Coopex

The breed from the mountain areas in France that are easily distinguished by their white heads. These bring strength to the herd and also high levels of protein in the milk as these animals originally were bred for milk for making cheese.

We are a closed herd, this means we breed all our own replacements and don’t buy in any stock. This is important as it allows us to maintain the health of the cows without the risk of bringing in problems from bought in animals.

BULLS, COWS & CALVES

Procross Breeding programme

We breed the cows using AI (artificial insemination) this is important as it not only allows us to use breeds from other countries but also allows us to use semen from the very best bulls of these breeds and so hopefully allow us to breed the best cow for our farm. It also allows us to implement the procross breeding programme and select the bull best suited to each cow.

We are a predominantly autumn calving herd with over 240 of the cows calving between the start of September and the end of November, the remaining cows calf in December and January. The dairy bred heifer (female) calves are kept on farm, these will be reared to become milking cows at 2 years old. The beef calves (male dairy calves and calves bred from beef sires/bulls) are either kept to be reared on farm for sale as beef animals or sold to one of a number of local farmers to be reared for beef.

diet

The cows are fed a mainly forage based diet. This consists of silage during the winter (grass that has been preserved during summer) and fresh grass during the summer, this is mainly in the form of cut and carry grass that we cut and bring to the cows but we are also working at getting the cows out to graze more each year. Another main component of the cows diet is bought in grain (wheat, barley and oats) this is grown and stored by a neighbouring arable (crop) farmer and delivered as we need it throughout the winter. There is also a large amount of concentrate feed bought from feed mills and consists of high protein, high energy blends and nuts which we use to balance the cows diet.

Great results

Our average yield per cow per year is between 8-8500 litres with an average fat and protein of 4.15% and 3.35%. The cows milk seasonally meaning that when they calf they milk for about 10 months before “going dry” for 2 months to give them a break before they calf again and rejoin the milking herd.