The Farmers Mart Oct-Nov 2018 - Issue 59 | Page 40

40 MANOR FARM
OCT/NOV 2018 • farmers-mart.co.uk
DAIRY FARM’S NEW MIX BRINGS MORE
MILK AND FUTURE DALES ATTRACTION
Chris Berry talks
with Adrian Harrison
at Thornton Rust.
CHANGING his dairy farm to find the best
solution has certainly kept Adrian Harrison
busy over the past 17 years since the dread-
ful days when foot and mouth disease
ravaged livestock farms in Wensleydale.
He’s gone from black and whites to Jerseys
and has now switched from totally Jerseys
to only partially with them while growing a
red and white herd.
Adrian and his wife Gillian are now also
aiming to expand their Wensleydale Ice
Cream business with an ice cream parlour
adding another tourist attraction to the
Dales. In short they are doing all they can
to ensure their future in farming at Manor
Farm, Thornton Rust near Aysgarth.
‘When our stock was taken out as a
contiguous cull it put to an end 30 years
of breeding for my dad Maurice. I saw it
as a once in a lifetime opportunity to start
something a little bit different and with
Channel Island Milk contracts being very
attractive at the time we restocked totally
with Jerseys in the November of 2001. We’d
had 8-10 Jerseys with the black and whites
for the better quality butterfat and we built
up to a herd of 130, but things move and
change and the favourable Channel Island
contracts gradually disappeared.’
The Harrisons had great success with their
Jerseys in the show rings picking up no less
than Dairy Interbreed Champion at the Great
Yorkshire Show in 2009 and Interbreed titles
at Westmorland Show and Wensleydale
Show in 2010 all with Hillside Lazers Ann.
‘She also won a second interbreed title
at Harrogate at the same show. As she was
a young cow she picked up the Interbreed
Junior title also. We showed at the Dairy
Event and Agri Scot too but as time went
on I found us getting hammered for having
less milk but higher quality while black
and white herds were thriving.’
‘I was coming to a wall. Jersey milk was
36ppl with Longley Milk but there was
nobody else up here for them to have an
efficient tanker run, so I was on 22ppl yet
producing much better milk. We had to do
something to change the business around
and start driving it forward so I sold a lot of
in-calf Jersey heifers and bought some red
and whites. We’ve blended between the
Ayrshire and Holstein to get a high vigour
cow with a bit of oomph about it.’
‘We’re keeping a small elite herd of
Jerseys for our ice cream with some of
their milk going in the tanker along with all
of the milk from the red and whites. The
Jerseys have no cull cow value or calf value
around here and we’re too far away from
other breeders, but the beef calves from
the red and whites that go to Leyburn mart
at 8 weeks perform well. For the past three
years we have sold our milk to ARLA.’
‘We’re now producing 10,000 to 15,000
litres more milk per month but with the
same number of cows. Our Jerseys pro-
duce between 5000-5500 litres per year
and the red and whites 7500-8000. The red
and whites are pedigree registered through
the Ayrshire Cattle Society.’
Adrian’s herd calves all year round and he
has built up rearing of his own replacements
through AI using sexed semen on all his heif-
ers and the majority of his better cows, with
beef calves coming as a result of putting ap-
proximately half the herd to the Belgian Blue.