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Bentley Ford Farm
Name:
David, Cheryl and Rob Higgins
Location:
Shropshire
Farm sectors:
Dairy
About Bentley Ford Farm
- Joined the Strategic Dairy Farm network in Spring 2024
- All-year-round calving, fully-housed herd
- 210 pedigree Holsteins
- Yields of 10,000 L per cow with 3,800 L from forage
- 370 acres used for silage and maize
Follow Bentley Ford Farm if you are interested in:
- Maximising milk from forage
- Achieving high standards of cow health and welfare
- Exploring the use of technology to improve farm productivity
- Improving farm infrastructure
Overview
Bentley Ford Farm is home to 210 pedigree Holstein cows. This family farm is managed by three generations, including third-generation farmers, David, Cheryl and their son, Rob.
Our farm
Located near Shrewsbury, Shropshire, this farm is made up of 370 acres, used for growing feed for the housed cows, including silage and maize.
Our herd
An all-year-round calving, fully-housed herd of 210 Holsteins. The cows average 10,000 L at 4.0% butterfat and 3.3% protein, milking on a swingover herringbone parlour.
The herd is averaging around 11% lameness, with mobility scores at 2 and 3, monitored quarterly.
Rob does all the AI on the farm, using SenseHub monitoring, allowing the cows to be served as soon as they are in heat.
They are currently achieving a pregnancy rate of 29.9%. All the herd replacement heifers are reared on the farm.
Our journey
The Higgins family have been managing Bentley Ford Farm since the 1950s, starting with Rob’s great-grandfather, with three generations still working on the farm daily.
The farm has organically grown over the last 70 years, with the most recent project being infrastructure changes to two of their sheds.
In winter 2023, they built a new shed for the calving cows and renovated an existing shed to add cubicles and allow for a Lely robotic scraper.
In their other shed for milkers, they have an automatic scraper system, however, it splashes a bit of muck up onto the beds, so they thought they’d try something different.
They are all really happy with how the new sheds look and said their cows seem to have settled into both the new and the renovated sheds.
Through the Strategic Dairy Farm programme, they want to improve overall yields and milk from forage, make further improvements to buildings and continue working on farm improvements and performance.
