The Farmers Mart Oct/Nov 2016 - Issue 48 | Page 64

Thornhill Hall Farm YOUR ONE STOP SHOP FOR MATERIALS, BOTH RECLAIMED & NEW Professional, Personable & Reliable Service • • • • • • • Wooden & Concrete Sleepers Telegraph Poles Concrete Panels Re Cycled Railway Ballast Shipping Containers Motorway Barriers Astro Turf Proud suppliers to Tom Rawson & Evolution Farming CONTACT ANDREW LYNN Blue Bear Trading, 26 Dublin Street, Edinburgh, EH3 6NN (T) 0131 297 0246 / (M) 07515 279 198 www.bluebeartrading.co.uk A RANGE OF INSURANCE COVERS THAT ARE AS VARIED AS THE CHANGING SEASONS Farm insurance from NFU Mutual. Call 01937 844869 for a quote or pop in NFU Office, The Coach House, 42 High Street, Boston Spa, LS23 6EA Our Agents are appointed representatives of The National Farmers Union Mutual Insurance Society Limited (No. 111982). Registered in England. Registered Office: Tiddington Road, Stratford upon Avon, Warwickshire, CV37 7BJ. Authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority. A member of the Association of British Insurers. For security and training purposes, telephone calls may be recorded and monitored. 64 Oct/Nov 2016 www.farmers-mart.co.uk Evolution of a dairy farming enterprise Chris Berry talks with Tom Rawson at Thornhill Hall Farm »»IN THE WORLD OF STOCKS and shares it is often touted that the best time to buy and expand your business portfolio is when prices are low. That may not have been what dairy farmer Tom Rawson had in mind when he started on his current course but there is little denying that when the milk price returns to a decent level he should be well placed to get his share of the cream. Tom farms with parents Gary and Linda at Thornhill Hall Farm near Dewsbury where they have a tenancy on the main holding from the Savile Estate and a number of other tenancies that make up their 375 acres with land around Ossett and Horbury. They currently have a herd of 280 milkers and grow maize, barley, wheat and kale. While the dairy farm at home has expanded since Tom returned from his studies at Harper Adams College in 1999 it is his more recent and fast-growing company Evolution Farming that is starting to cause a stir not just in the dairy world but also in general farm management circles. He’s clearly not about to forget his roots though. “Mum and dad (Linda and Gary) got this farm in 1991 as their first tenancy. Dad was a farm manager in Ossett on another dairy farm. They applied for this with a lot of others and we got a lifetime tenancy. It was a huge achievement for someone who had come up through the ranks. They decided to go down the organic route and by 2001 we were fully organic, which at the time was a big thing. We had 60 milking cows with our milk going to OMSCO. Once we had gone fully organic we had a month of 29.5ppl and then the price crashed. The organic milk price never recovered. We came out of organic milk and back to conventional production in 2012 when we went with Buckley’s. We stayed with them a couple of years before signi ng with ARLA. The reason we left Buckley’s was we are chiefly a high fat and high protein milk producer with a spring calving herd and Buckley’s didn’t pay on protein. Our spring calving didn’t help either as we were going from 400 to 6,000 litres a day in 4-6 weeks. “Our cows at Thornhill Hall are all crossbreds with a lot of them being Jersey X originally. The Jerseys went on to Holsteins but now everything is to the Irish Friesian. We started cross breeding 11 years ago and used the Jersey fairly strongly in the early days to bring down the size of the cattle. We now maintain the size they are at because we are on a manufacturing contract with ARLA and our aim is to increase fat and protein year on year. All Irish Friesians sell their milk on fat and protein. Our annual average