Farm of the Week: Enterprise seeing farmer turning muck into brass

Trevor Hodgson was not entirely unhappy with the new rules on Nitrate Vulnerable Zones.

He does complain that they get in the way of best practice on Marfit Head Farm, Saltersgate – sloping down from a high point which overlooks the Hole of Horcum, in the North Yorks Moors. On the other hand, the government's requirements helped him get planning permission for a new slurry storage pit which he would have wanted anyway. It cost 60,000, but the way he calculates, it is paying him back faster than any other investment.

It means he can save all the wash-out from winter housing for his 240 cows for use when it is most productive, instead of spreading it just to get rid of it.

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Some farmers still regard muck as a problem. Mr Hodgson sees it as a resource. That is one of the reasons he was a regional finalist in this year's Grassland Manager of the Year awards – and one of the reasons he can hang on in, for the sake of his three children, while dairy farming continues its brutal shake-out.

He still makes a living from his six days a week, 5.30-7.30, producing 1.5 million litres a year for First Milk. He employs two men and contracts out his heifer-rearing. He could do with another hand, though, and some spare money to invest.

He grew up grass-conscious, under the guidance of his father, Terry, who still farms at Grosmont with Trevor's brother, David. The family took on the Saltersgate farm in 1985 and Trevor Hodgson, 38, has run it for 20 years.

"You have two choices in dairy," he said. "You can take them all indoors and feed them for productivity. Or you can take them out as much as possible and go for low input and low output. You won't get 10,000 litres a cow. But you can get 7,000 – and the cows aren't under the same kind of strain."

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Going less intensive has meant breeding out some of the Holstein Friesian genetics which came with the farm, because the high-bred Holstein cannot take in enough grass for the milk it wants to produce. When browsing the bull catalogues, Mr Hodgson turns past any that boast production of supercows and looks for the build which speaks of outdoor survivalism. He has tried Jersey, British Friesian, NZ Friesian, Ayrshire, Brown Swiss and Montbelliard. The cows are a mix including most of those and he has kept three bulls, from the Ayrshire, Friesian and Jersey crosses, to do what AI fails to do.

He is trying Dairy Shorthorn and lined up to try Norwegian Red. But he is more or less decided that the Jersey cross is the horse for his particular course. It gives him six or seven lactations and its hard black hooves can take the soakings which go with a long grazing season. Already, the move away from pure Holsteins has reduced his vet bill from 20,000 to 6,000.

The cows start to come in at night from the end of October and will be fully housed for about four months, most years, depending on snow. Overall, 80-85 per cent of their feed is grass or silage.

Mr Hodgson makes constant use of a 400 plate meter, which assesses the weight of grass he is growing per day. He uses temporary fencing to control the grazing. Cows in milk get the juicy tops, then dry cows are moved in to eat it down. He runs 320 acres, including 100 rented, and reckons his slurry saves 35 tonnes of bagged fertiliser a year. With the value of the extra grass added, he works out a payback from slurry storage of 12,000 a year.

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To get the most out of it, he spent 16,000 on a 'trailing shoe' applicator, which parts the grass and delivers the slurry down to the soil. A standard splash-plate applicator would have cost 7,000. But his way, the soil gets six per cent more out of the muck – and the cows can come back on the pasture after three weeks instead of six.

The trailing shoe technique also minimises smells and run-off, and so does his annual investment in aeration, at 11 an acre. But he does it beca-use it improves the grass no end. With the right soil management, he says, there is no need to reseed.

An incidental benefit of aeration is its spectacular impact on run-off. He said: "We have two valleys coming down into one and before we used to aerate, we would see heavy rain gathering and running off towards Pickering. Now, it doesn't happen, except in exceptional conditions.

"The bill just for planning flood control in Pickering is about 800,000. I wonder about the difference it would make if you spent that much on soil aeration in the area."

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In the old days of mixed farms, he points out, the rotation system would have meant ploughing every field occasionally. He argues that the NVZ rules should be flexible enough to reward aeration.

Normally, he would start muck spreading as soon as the soil temperature reached 5C. Last year, that was February 4. This year, it was early April, but if conditions had been right on February 4, he would have had to wait until February 15, because the NVZ spreading calendar is based on rainfall risk. And he now has to stop in September, although he would like to carry on until mid-October, for the sake of grass in November. He reckons lost growth this year will cost him 29 extra truckloads of Trafford Gold, from an ethanol plant in Manchester, at 29 tonnes a load and 62 a tonne – or the equivalent in sugar beet.

"I don't know what the carbon footprint of 29 wagons is but that seems to me like one Defra target working against another," he said. "If I have stopped run-off, why can't I get a dispensation on the slurry spreading?"

His buyer, First Milk, pays low-end, at 23p a litre, but he likes it because it is farmer-owned and its chairman, Bill Mustoe of Scarborough, takes calls from farmers direct.

Asda: a correction

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In last week's Farm of the Week feature on Acorn Dairies we quoted the farmer, Graham Tweddle, who said that in the mid-1990s Asda were buying milk in from Poland.

Asda wish us to point out that this is incorrect. The company has never imported milk from Poland. We apologise for the error.

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