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Farm/dairy name: Town End Farm
Owners: R.L Vernon & Partners
No Dairy cows: 100
Breed of cows: Friesian Holstein
Housing: Cubicle building
Milking system: DeLaval Herringbone 50°with Midiline milking
Number of milkings per day: 2
Town End Farm has been in the Vernon family for 53 years and in 1993 it was run as an all beef enterprise. Richard and Olive Vernon were not getting any younger so daughter Kathleen decided to come home to give them a hand. Kathleen said “I came back to give it a go and see what it takes to be a farmer, I thought there would be a future in dairying in the years to come for myself and my son Mark who was keen to work in agriculture.”
As there were now two families to support the first thing was to start milking again. The farm was no stranger to dairy cows and had seen a range of equipment from bucket to RTS and the current installation which was an abreast. So Kathleen the proud dairy farmer was born with 10 cows- no mean feat at the time.
In 1993 she became a partner and over the three years had brought the herd up to 70 cows. During this time her son Mark had become more and more interested in the farm He attended Robaston College at Penkeridge and got a good grounding in the best practice of farming whilst building up a practical knowledge at home.
In 1999 Kathleen made Mark her business partner. Together over the last few years they have operated a flying herd, being careful and selective they have increased the herd to 100 Friesian Holstein cows with a herd average of 8,000 litres. Kathleen said “with the new parlour it will give us more time to practice good herd management and we hope this will increase the yields further”.
“Last year we saw an advert for a DeLaval parlour on special offer” said Mark “we decided that milking in an old eight unit x eight cow abreast was not going to take us to 120 cows and the increase in herd average that we wanted so we invited three milking machine manufactures to give us some ideas” Kathleen added “We chose DeLaval because they and there local dealer, DairyScope where much more interested in designing a system which would benefit us than actually even getting the order. We were impressed by the DeLaval company’s track record, the excellence of the dealer and the way in which their long experience and expertise was given freely even before we placed the order. An excellent partner for what to us was a pretty daunting project”
So the button was pressed and Town End Farm’s new 16 x 32 DeLaval parlour milked the first cows. Mark said “there was very little problem despite the cows coming from the abreast they are getting used to it quickly and there hasn’t been a drop in milk” It’s now a pleasure for Kathleen and Mark to milk. They have a shorter milking time and are much more comfortable in their work.
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