Meet the farmer's daughter who has set up her own cattle ultrasound scanning business

Hattie currently splits her time between Peter and Rachel Hall’s dairy farm in Melbourne, near Pocklington and her new HN Livestock Scanning business that she started nine months ago, which she said came about through her time at Givendale.

“A guy came scanning and I thought I could do that. Mum was a stenographer in a hospital, so I had ultrasound in my genes, plus nearly everything I’ve ever done has been involved with cattle.

“I had been wanting to work for myself, to get myself in a better position for the future, something that would help me be a bit more flexible, and hopefully, with my boyfriend Josh’s income too, could lead to having something of our own in future.

“I think both beef and dairy farmers are wanting to become a lot more efficient and with the way life is today they just can’t afford to hold on to animals that are unproductive. They don’t have the housing or the grass to feed animals that aren’t contributing to the farm. Productivity is very important.

They are also wanting to know whether the bull they have bought or the semen used has actually worked. It matters.

Hattie bit the bullet, leaving her job with JSR and went self-employed, going on to farms milking cows whilst she undertook her scanning course and purchasing the right equipment.

“I bought a new scanner having tested out a few products. The one I went for was a big investment, the most I could realistically afford, but it has already definitely been worth it. You get what you pay for. I’ve gone for the best quality picture I could get because the better the scanner, the more confidence you have in yourself and the better job you can do.

“I started as HN Livestock Scanning in June last year. I am only cattle scanning at moment, because that’s what I’m trained for, but I had a really busy back end of year for herds that are calving this spring. Hopefully those herds I worked on will come around again this year.

“The thing with cattle is that there is calving all year round, especially in dairy herds, and so there will always be scanning work and although many may already have a cattle scanner there are still many who are in need of someone.

“I have already scanned cattle throughout Yorkshire and into North Lincolnshire. The best way of my business growing is word of mouth and I’ve had to be patient. If you are reliable, approachable, understanding and patient with farmers, understanding that things change in someone’s day, and you do the right job, then it should work out just fine.

Hattie works part-time on the Halls’ dairy farm where Josh also works as a herdsman but said the scanning work is her priority.

“At the moment when someone messages me I go with whenever they are free. I do a lot of the calf rearing side at Melbourne and have set days. I try to keep other days free, but Peter and Rachel are very good and allow my work to be flexible. I do think it is quite hard for young people in this country to get their hands on a farm and so both of us working for Peter and Rachel and building up our own business suits us.

“I want to help people out whoever they are and the size of the herd doesn’t matter to me. I’ll scan any cattle and I’ll go anywhere. I did a couple of Dexter herds last year and some smaller herds compared to the big farms like Givendale, but for everyone, scanning is really important to them, in fact often more important on a smaller herd.

Hattie has always been level-headed about her future from being a teenager.

“I went to Harper Adams University and studied Agriculture with Animal Science to make sure I ended up in an agriculture-based job because I always knew I wasn’t going to end up on the farm at home, as it isn’t big enough to take another income.

“I was biology-minded at school, so animal science appealed, and I definitely wanted to be animal focussed. I knew I didn’t want to do a wide range of subjects like arable, so I specialised in animal health and nutrition.

Working with cattle was pretty much in Hattie’s destiny, but if things had worked out differently, she could have been following her brother down the butchery line.

“I competed right up to national level in YFC stockjudging, winning at Yorkshire level and coming fourth in the National Senior Stockman of Year, and I absolutely loved my twelve months at Givendale working with Stabilisers. I still have an involvement at home with mum and dad’s herd too.

“My brother William is a butcher in Sandal and opened his own shop three years ago. The animals we rear at home all go to his shop and it is as important for mum and dad to know that the bull has worked, just as much as it is for my other customers.

“I graduated from Harper Adams in 2019 and went out to work on farms in New Zealand for a year through a scholarship I’d received while at university from the Butchers & Drovers Institution, because at that time I had shown a real interest in the meat trade. I’m still interested in it now, but just right at the start of it.