Our Organic Farm
All our organic Guernsey milk is produced at Wood Farm, a 350 acre mixed arable and livestock farm.
We have 120 Guernsey cows producing milk and 60 youngstock waiting to enter the herd when they reach 2 years of age. We operate a system that aims to maximise animal welfare and freedom. The cows are kept outside grazing grass during the spring, summer and autumn and are generally only kept inside wehen it is too cold or too wet which is when they choose to be inside. During the winter, all the cows are bedded on a deep litter straw system which allows them the freedom to carry out natural behaviour which is not always possible with more conventional cubicle systems.
Our cows are not pushed too hard to produce milk and have lived up to 16 years of age. As an organic farm, we aim to use antibiotics and hormones only when absolutely necessary rather than routinely as with some conventional systems. If we do use antibiotics, the milk from the cow must be kept from human consumption for double the time allowed in conventional farming. Homeopathy has often been a worthy replacement for more conventional medicine.
We take organic farming principles very seriously. A large proportion of the concentrate feeds (e.g wheat) fed to the cows are grown on the farm. We do not use chemical sprays or inorganic fertilisers. Instead we manage weeds and diseases using tradional crop rotations and we fertilise the soil with animal manures and nitrogen from clovers and other legumes. Our farm has now been organic for over 15 years and the difference in wildlife, in particularly in the soil, is significant.
