Grazing quality grass and making good silage is helping a Pembrokeshire dairy farm produce 4,650 litres of milk from forage.

The Morris family at Bowett Farm, near Pembroke, have focused on improving the protein and energy in grass to reduce their need to buy feed for their 550-cow British Friesian x Holstein herd.

By growing high quality silage and grass through targeted use of nutrients, soil sampling, reseeding every five or six years and incorporating red clover into the silage leys, less concentrates and fertiliser are used.

With homegrown maize silage from 36 hectares (ha) in the winter ration, more than half of the 8,000 litre annual milk yield average comes from forage.

“We try to utilise everything we can grow, adding value to everything we have on the farm, and to do that as environmentally sustainably as we can,’’ says Richard, who joined his parents, Bill and Ann, in the business in 1998 and together with them and his wife, Claire, has steadily grown the herd from the 90 cows milked at that time.

The Morris’ have been producing milk at Bowett Farm for 100 years, a farm purchased by Richard’s grandfather, Joseph, in 1923.

Installing a 54-point rotary in 2019 was a turning point, halving milking times to two and a half hours and operated by one milker.

Cows graze from February until November. Grass covers are measured weekly and the results are recorded on AgriNet software, giving Richard a wealth of information from which he can earmark the poorest yielding fields for reseeding each year.

Soil disturbance is kept to a minimum and fields are sprayed off and direct drilled, allowing the land to come back into production much more promptly compared to cultivation with a plough. Richard mostly sows Aber HSG3 long term grazing mixture with clover.

Three cuts of silage are taken annually, the first in the last week of April; in 2023 it analysed at 11.8ME and 15% protein.

As well as maize, 300 acres of winter corn is grown for crimping, with 5-6kg/head/day fed in the winter.

“The more protein we have got available in the diet from homegrown sources the less we rely on buying it in,’’ says Richard. Rape meal protein has replaced soya in the Total Mixed Ration (TMR). Concentrates are fed at a rate of 1t/cow/year.

Calving is in an 11-week block from 1 September, with 70% in the first four weeks.

All sexed semen is used on 300 animals for the first three weeks of insemination, with a 53% in-calf rate achieved in the last breeding season. Charolais genetics are used on the rest of the herd and Aberdeen Angus on the heifers.

Calves are reared for six to eight weeks on calf milk replacer fed twice a day with ad lib straw and cake also offered.

Weaning is at 42-48 days, or at 70kg when calves have doubled their birthweight. Calves are introduced to a TMR of homegrown feed from four months old and turned out to grass in early April.

“As soon as they hit the grass heifers don’t see concentrates again until they hit the parlour at two years old,’’ says Richard.

Richard and Claire have a five-year-old daughter, Ava, so one day there could be a fourth generation of the Morris’ farming at Bowett Farm.

With that next generation in mind, farming as sustainably as possible is important, not just for business performance but for the environment.

“Farmers are great ambassadors for looking after the environment and wildlife,’’ says Richard, a runner-up in the British Grassland Society Grassland Farmer of the Year 2023 and a member of the Cleddau Grassland Society.

Bowett has 40 acres of woodland which has been fenced off to provide wildlife habitat, and the farm’s carbon footprint for milk is ahead of the benchmark set by its milk buyer, Leprino.

The business has also invested in a 50kW wind turbine, a biomass boiler and 70kW solar array to reduce electricity costs, making it almost entirely self-sufficient in energy use.

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