The Farmers Mart Dec-Jan 2018 - Issue 54 | Page 54

54 DAVISON FARM
DEC/JAN 2018 • farmers-mart.co.uk
MICKLEBY AND
EGTON: WHERE
THE LEARNING
NEVER STOPS
Chris Berry talks with Guy Prudom
at Davison Farm, Egton
ORGANIC farming doesn’t work out for
downturn in the economy and consumers
no longer had the extra cash to pay the
premium.’
The move away from organic farming
combined with lessons learned from that
system has led to Guy feeling greater satis-
faction with the moves they have made in
cattle breeds and genetics.
everybody and that was the case for the
Prudoms who farm at Northfields Farm
near Mickleby and Davison Farm just out
of Egton in North Yorkshire, but Guy Pru-
dom points out that it was by no means a
bad experience.
‘What we learned about grassland man-
agement while being organic was price-
What we learned about
less. We changed from ranching the farms
grassland management
to paddock grazing moving the cattle
around and allowing the grass to recover,
while being organic
and because you can’t just go and throw
was priceless
a bag of nitrogen around when you’re
organic you’re looking at making sure the
ph in soil is correct.’
‘I certainly wouldn’t want anyone who
‘We pulled out of the organic system
is still in organic farming to think we didn’t
that we’d started with on 31 December
get anything out of it because we most
2007 in 2015 following a change in rented
certainly did, and we have been able to
land that led us to not having enough grass
improve what we now do under tradition-
to finish the cattle we had that we were
al farming because of our experiences. It
finishing at
24
months.
At
the
time
the
also proved to us that the genetics in our
Goodchild Agricultural Engineering - ETH.pdf 1 04/01/2018 16:12:41
organic price had crashed too due to the
herd weren’t as good as they should have
‘
’
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been. That’s why we now have Stabilis-
er cattle. They’re smaller cows than the
big Simmentals we still have also but the
Stabilisers are cheaper to keep through
winter.’
Guy farms with his parents Peter and
Christine who live at Northfields Farm that
runs to around 500 acres and is predomi-
nantly arable oriented. While Guy studied
at Myerscough
agricultural college and
69218 - JWMortimerLtd - 8TH.pdf 1 20/12/2017 15:22:12
spent two further years away managing
an outdoor pig unit Peter had started a
suckler herd that had grown to 80 cows.
‘I came back in 1993 and we knew the
farm wasn’t going to be big enough to
sustain all of us. I’d had an idea of wanting
to push the arable side, but we were in the
wrong area, so we began pushing further
with the suckler cattle. We took a little
extra land and upped the numbers.’
‘Richardson & Smith of Whitby used to
have an annual letting day at Ruswarp
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