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