Nearly three months after the ‘Pasture to Profit’ conference in Worcester I still keep thinking about Neil Grigg and Tom Foot’s entertaining double act, as they recalled their ‘incredible journey’ so far setting up a milk production business from nothing.

This article was first published in the December 2012 issue of Grass & Forage Farmer – the British Grassland Society’s farmer magazine (four issues available to non-members for just £10 a year– subscribe at www.britishgrassland.com).

The cows are milked once a day for ten months

Seale-Hayne graduates Neil and Tom got together in 2009, setting themselves the goal of milking cows by 2012. However at that time they had no dairy animals, no land to keep them on or any means of milking.

Neil

Tom

“Our aim is to build a profitable company that can generate a surplus for re-investment,” explained Neil who runs the business side of their company Prospect Farming.
 
“It’s about starting with very little and growing net worth through the appreciation of stock, while generating cash by producing milk as cheaply as possible. A grazing-based system is the obvious way to achieve this.”
 
Opportunistic grazing!
The journey has not been easy – but they did start milking cows on 25 January this year. In autumn 2009 they bought 25 bulling heifers and ‘run-around’ cows that had fallen out of tight block calving systems. They wintered them on whatever land they could find – including small parcels of rough grazing on building sites and even roundabouts! 
 
By spring 2011, they had 300 cows ready to mate, but still no permanent place to keep them. They considered tenancies, contract farming and share farming agreements – anything which might allow them to milk 300 cows on 100ha (247 acres).
 
By July they had secured the opportunity to take on Longlands Farm – a 360ha (890 acre) arable unit in south Dorset, on a five-year farm business tenancy. 

The plan was to install a second hand 20:40 milking parlour, but they soon realised this would limit future herd expansion. However, buying a bigger parlour would require a large chunk of capital, and with any tenant’s improvements not compensated for at the end of the five year FBT, would not have been a sound investment.
 
Mobile milking
This is when Neil and Tom decided mobile milking might be the answer. Drawing on Tom’s practical expertise of mechanics and welding – they modified hired milking bails, which were initially set up on the hard-standing of a silage pit.
But with the flinty surface causing increasing foot problems, the decision was made to milk out in the fields. So not only do the cows move to different paddocks each day – the milking bails do too.

The cows don’t have far to go for milking!

A generator, vacuum pump and milk cooler are housed in a shipping container welded to a trailer chassis. A milk tanker is hired from their customer, a local cheese maker. The cows are milked once a day for ten months of the year, block calving in spring.
 
“It is still early days and every day is a school day,” Neil admits. “The stress encountered has been challenging, but the satisfaction of achieving our goal of milking in 2012 has been amazing. We are very grateful for the hard work undertaken by everyone who has supported us to get this far.”