The organic dairy farm in Yorkshire where putting the cows out to grass is the best day of the year

Angus shifted the farm to organic over twenty years ago, the family has established its Stamfrey clotted cream, Yorg drinking yogurt and in recent times has opened the on-farm Milk Shed which houses two vending machines for milk, milkshakes and their existing brands.

Sam says the interaction the family now has with the public is very positive and an eye opener that they possibly didn’t expect in relation to the education that the family is able to impart.

“We’re seeing a lot more of the public and go down to the Milk Shed quite a lot, topping things up. We often end up chatting to people. Some have absolutely no idea about dairy farming and where milk comes from, but they are very keen to learn if you chat with them.

“Our produce in the vending machines now allows us to sell direct. We mainly supply the cream and yogurt drinks to other farm shops and local wholesalers who get them into restaurants, hotels and pubs, but that still means over ninety per cent of our milk is collected every other day by Organic Herd, which used to be called OMSCO. They’ve rebranded recently and it appears to have been a good move.

“We have three types of vending machine on the farm, one that dispenses the milk and milk shakes; the second includes glass bottles which customers can bring back to refill, as well as the cream, yogurt drinks and tray bakes from Anna Ramshay’s Generation Bakes that she makes for us including millionaire shortbread, malteser tiffin and chocolate brownies.

"Anna’s from farming too. Our third vending machine is for coffee using beans from Rounton Coffee based in the village next door.”

Sam’s elder brother Will ensures that everything is well stocked in the Milk Shed.

“Will is down there as much as any of us,” says Sam. “He gets down and chats with people, keeps an eye on the numbers and lets us know when we need to restock with anything.”

Sam feels that organic dairy farming, plus the herd’s movement to being antibiotic free, is good for the cows and that customers like to hear this too.

“We went organic in 2001, before I was involved in the farm. I was five years old at the time so I’ve never known different, but I wouldn’t change. I like organic systems and that we are low input. Many who come just for our milk tend to come because it is organic.

“We went antibiotic-free around four years ago. What that means is that we won’t put any cow’s milk in the tank where that cow has ever been treated with antibiotics. It has proved very successful for us.

"I was a bit unsure when we started but now feel quite strongly that using antibiotics was not benefitting our cows. We still get cows that get ill, but we’re now getting better rates of recovery without using antibiotics.”

Stamfrey Farm has been wholly dairy for over fifty years having started as a mixed farming operation when Sam’s grandfather Martyn bought the farm in 1963.

The dairy herd has evolved into a mainly British Friesian based herd with some crossing to encourage such as butterfat content.

“We are mainly Friesian,” says Sam. “We have some Kiwi crosses that have brought a bit of Jersey into the herd and we’ve had Scandinavian-crosses in the past so we have a bit of a brown tinge to some. They are on the whole slightly smaller animals and are good for grazing.

“We have the cows out as much as possible and like to have them out by the end March. We’ve had them out in February before now. We bring them in around November. If we’re set up well for grazing and we move them regularly they can stay out a bit longer.

“We measure the grass in fields and give a set area each day depending on the length and quality of the grass. However long it is we try to get about eighteen kilograms of dry matter into the cows per day with a small amount coming from concentrate in the parlour, the rest comes from grass."

Sam says one of the best days of the year is when the cows can get back on to the grass.

“We haven’t really advertised it too early because we are worried about hundreds of people turning up, but we do tell people at the last minute and in the last couple of years we’ve had people turn up to watch. It’s always a happy occasion seeing them bouncing around.”

Stamfrey Farm produces all of its own replacements and Sam says that decisions made on AI and bulling are a joint affair between himself, his father and Adam, their herdsman who does most of the AI work.

“We calve in two blocks, in spring and autumn, and are predominantly AI. We have an Angus bull that goes on the heifers and sweeps up.

“We get all of our replacements from the spring block using sexed semen on around 50 of the top performers. The rest of the spring block and all the autumn served cows go to the Angus, either AI or natural bulling.

“Our cows average around four lactations, something we want to increase. When we are deciding on breeding we look at production, look at the dam and see her history. We’ve worked on that quite a bit over the last two to three years and the herd has improved. If a cow’s production rate is not as good we put that to the Angus.

“Our cows average around 6000 litres, something we would like to improve on. I don’t think we can get a load higher with our low input system but some guys in our grazing group of about a dozen are averaging 6,500-7,000.”

Sam says that they never sit still for too long at Stamfrey.

“We invested in a calf rearing set up about ten years ago. Having healthy calves is so important to us and we run an Igloo and veranda system. We have the calves in their own individual pens for 3-4 days, just until they are drinking by themselves, then they go to the group pens of 14. It’s far healthier for them and more efficient for us. We can feed 90 calves when at its fullest in 20 minutes with the milk taxi, a tank of milk on wheels.”

Angus is also very much into soil health, building organic matter and has been using diverse swards on the farm in the last ten years.

“We’ve been in stewardship schemes and are currently just going into the new SFI scheme,” says Sam.