Even though it is in the north of England, many aspects of Dolphenby Farm are similar to systems that are commonplace in the Republic of Ireland or even New Zealand.

There are 550 spring calving, cross bred dairy cows on the 750-acre unit located in the Eden Valley near Penrith.

When the Irish Farmers Journal visited in early October, the entire herd was still grazing full time in a single group.

The farm is made up of dry, flat land which lends itself very well to a grass-based dairying system.

However, farm manager Jonny Slack is clear that he isn’t on a mission to keep all input costs on the floor.

“We are ideally after a cow that you can turn on by feeding a bit more cake when milk price is right. At the same time, we want a cow that can be sustained with 700kg of concentrates when milk prices aren’t good,” he explained.

Concentrates

The herd is on course this season to average 6,200 litres, or 560 kg of milk solids, from 1.4 tonnes of concentrates.

Meal feeding has been increased slightly in 2024 as milk prices have been reasonably favourable and grazing has been tricky at times.

This includes a cold spell in early summer which hit grass growth and then wet weather later on in August affected dry matter in grass.

A downside of the free draining soils is the farm can be prone to drought conditions, although that has not materialised in 2024.

Last year, dry conditions did affect growth rates in the early part of the summer, but grass yields on the farm still hit an impressive 14.5tDM/ha over the season.

Genetics

The herd initially started with mainly Holstein genetics, then Jersey and KiwiCross bulls were introduced, and Irish EBI Holstein bulls have been used more recently.

The mix of black and white genetics means the cows are not your typical low input crossbreds with lots of Jersey influence.

“Average cow liveweight is probably around 525kg. I think we could handle a slightly bigger cow, as long as it doesn’t impact on milk solids, fertility or feet,” Jonny said.

Cows start calving in early February, with the calving season running for 12 weeks to be finished up by early May. Again, it isn’t a standard low input spring system where most cows calve down within the first few weeks.

Instead, the calving pattern at Dolphenby Farm is slightly more spread out and this is reflected in the winter milking routine as there is no period when the entire herd is dry.

The first cows are dried off in December and the last ones are going dry in February when the first cows start calving down again.

Grazing

There is a long grazing season on the farm. The herd usually grazes day and night until early November, then is out by day and in at night until being housed full time at the end of November.

The grazing season kicks off as early as possible in February as soon as there is a reasonable number of cows calved to justify a grazing group.

Despite still being out full time when we visited in early October, cows were being buffer fed some silage at milking.

Jonny said the aim was to increase dry matter in the diet, as lush autumn grass was passing through cows too quickly.

Most paddocks are laid out for 24-hour breaks, with cows usually allocated paddocks near the yard for night grazing and land further from the parlour is grazed by day.

Effort is put into driving dry matter intakes, with Jonny saying cows are sometimes moved late at night if a paddock is well grazed down.

He likens it to regularly pushing up silage in housed systems, where a fresh bite when offered to cows will increase intakes and therefore milk production.

Housing

Extra livestock housing has recently become available for Jonny which will allow all cows and followers to be housed over the coming winter.

In the past, young stock were out wintered on deferred grass that had not been grazed during the autumn and supplementary silage bales were offered too.

Jonny explained that the downside to this system was that less grass was available the following spring and summer, as the outwintered paddocks were ploughed in the spring and put into barley.

From relief milker to business partner

Jonny Slack started off working at Dolphenby Farm as a part time relief milker and has progressed to become farm manager with a 25% stake in the business.

The other partner in the business is Robert Craig, who operates three separate dairy farms in Cumbria and Northumberland.

The dairy business at Dolphenby was initially started in 2012 when Robert and another partner took out a long-term lease on the farm from its owners Edenhall Estate.

Two years ago, the initial partner exited the business and Jonny, who was already working on the farm, took a 25% stake in the operation. A new 15-year lease with the owners was also agreed at that time.

Relationships

“Having good relationships with people is a really important thing for me. That includes everyone from our staff and landowners, to input suppliers and milk buyers,” Jonny said.

The system of farm support is changing in England where the Basic Payment Scheme is being phased out and replaced with schemes mainly aimed at environmental outcomes.

“We are joining the new Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) but we are not just doing it for the sake of claiming a payment. It needs to work for us and fit into our system,” Jonny Slack said.

He explained that the plan is to apply for measures under SFI which give a financial incentive to grow herbal leys, also known as multi species swards.

This should work well at Dolphenby because some herbal leys were already being utilised on the farm, so the multi species acreage will increase under the new scheme. Jonny sees the main benefits of herbal leys for the farm being a reduction in fertiliser requirements and less susceptibility to drought conditions.

Dolphenby Farm has a centrally located milking parlour and excellent grazing infrastructure throughout the milking platform.

Laneways are mostly covered in astroturf, although some have crushed sandstone and rail sleepers are placed in a few steeper stretches which are prone to getting cut up.

40-unit parlour

Cows are milked in a 40-unit swing over parlour which was built when the initial dairying partnership started in 2012.

It is a fairly low-tech parlour, with the likes of automatic cluster removers or auto ID, not present.

Jonny said this is reflected in repairs and maintenance costs. “We like to be able to fix things ourselves,” he said.

Tail paint is used for heat detection at breeding time and cows are fed in the parlour with batch feeders where each pull rope feeds five cows at a time.

Milking usually requires three staff, and it takes three hours in the morning from start to finish with evening milking taking around two hours 15 minutes.

Labour efficiency is important for Jonny and a key focus in the yard is finding simple, low-cost improvements to save time and money.

For example, a scraper has been fitted to the backing gate in the circular collecting yard.

This scrapes the collecting yard as cows are pushed forward and has cut down on the amount of water and time needed to wash up after milking.

Different thicknesses of hose pipes have also been trialled in the parlour to find the optimal balance between water flow rate and water pressure for washing up.