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Shropshire: Climate resilience through mitigating risk
Past Event
- booking closed
Thursday, 11 July 2024
10:30am - 2:30pm
Bentley Ford Farm, Frodesley Court, Longnor, Shrewsbury, SY5 7QH,
What3words address: ///unpainted.moped.snacks
AHDB
Join us at Bentley Ford Farm to discuss how mitigating on-farm risks can help build business resilience.
This meeting will cover
- How heat stress can affect milk yields and how Bentley Ford Farm has reduced this
- How to build business resilience and futureproof your farming business
- What environmental resilience is and how different factors affect this
Meeting details
This on-farm meeting will be split into three different stations:
Station 1: Heat Stress in dairy farms with Tom Chamberlain, Chalcombe Consultancy
The Higgins family have been involved in heat stress trials this year and last year.
They are monitoring variables such as shed temperature, outdoor temperature and temperature of the milk to determine whether the cows are subjected to heat stress or not.
Off the back of this, they have been able to make changes to the management of the cows to try and reduce the impact of heat stress.
Station 2: Business resilience and futureproofing your business with Helen Evans, Kite Consulting
Helen is the Higgins family consultant. She will speak about business resilience on the modern-day dairy farm and use Bentley Ford Farm as an example.
She will explain how investments they have made have futureproofed their business. Also delving into ways they could improve this further in the future
Station 3: Environmental resilience with Frontier
Frontier help Bentley Ford Farm with their agronomy.
They will speak about environmental resilience and use examples of the Higgins family business to illustrate this.
We will cover:
- SFI
- Fertiliser usage
- Swards
- Managing drought-tolerant plants
- Flood risk
- Cropping
About Bentley Ford Farm
Bentley Ford Farm is 370 acres in Shrewsbury, farmed by David, Cheryl and Robert Higgins.
It is home to 210, fully housed, pedigree Holstein cows, on an all-year-round calving system. The cows are averaging 10,000 litres, with 3,800 litres from forage, at 4% fat and 3.3% protein.
By joining the Strategic Dairy Farm programme, they want to improve what they are already doing, look at some infrastructure changes, such as improving their youngstock housing, and continue to maximise milk from forage.