Welcome to Holden Farm Dairy
Holden Farm Dairy at Bwlchwernen Fawr
Bwlchwernen Fawr has been managed organically since 1973 and is Wales’ longest certified organic dairy farm. Our herd of 80 Ayrshire cows are ideally suited to the geography and climate of the farm. They produce a sweet, rich milk, which is perfect for cheesemaking. The farm aims to produce high quality nutrient rich food, whilst maintaining and building on the natural and social capital of the place and minimising demand on non renewable external inputs. After over fifty years of sustainable management we continue to see increased productivity, growing biodiversity and improved soil, plant and animal health.
The Land - Pasture
We look after about half of the land as permanent pasture, harnessing the adaptability, biodiversity and resilience of these long established fields as part of the cows’ whole food diet.
When it comes to pasture management, on all fields, we practise holistic or mob grazing, trying to mirror the activity of wild herds that were able to create and grow soil and grasslands by grazing, peeing and pooing then moving on, naturally preventing poaching and over grazing, providing sufficient nutrients and allowing the land to recover and regenerate quickly. It’s quite intensive grazing to manage within the farm system and requires infrastructure - tracks, troughs and fencing and man power (fence moving and back fencing when possible for each twelve hourly change) but it certainly improves the land’s capacity to increase organic matter in the soil and grow nutrient rich, species diverse plants.
We practise traditional mixed livestock farming, so the other half of the farm has the potential to be included in an arable rotation. For thirty five years the rotation started with one year of field vegetables, as a cash crop, originally brassicas and latterly carrots - food for people, but we stopped growing field vegetables about ten years ago, which coincided with the start of cheese making.
Now the rotation starts with one or two years of spring sown cereals for feed (which would have followed the field vegetables), originally oats or wheat and latterly a combicrop of peas (for protein and nitrogen fixing), oats and barley, then one year of arable silage undersown with a herbal ley for the next 5 or 6 years of fertility building
We’ve always used diverse herbal ley seed mixes. Newman Turner described them as his ‘fertiliser merchant, food manufacturer and vet all in one’ :
- The legumes fix nitrogen, helping to build soil fertility
- they store carbon
- they’re more resilient to extreme weather - in 2018, when so much of the grassland was burnt off, the chicory with its deep roots kept flowering. Likewise those varied and deeper root systems help make the soil more permeable in times of extreme wet weather
- the deeper rooting plants draw up nutrients that are otherwise inaccessible
- they have anthelmintic properties
- their diversity is good for biodiversity!
- they bring the advantages of permanent pasture to temporary leys
- their nutrient density is rich and diverse providing food and medicine
We work with these leys and respond to them - this might mean skipping the July silage cut and taking them through to third cut, providing ‘teenage grass’ and fibre for the cows and allowing the plants to flower and set seed - good for biodiversity and the pasture’s regeneration
It is important to remember that the cows are also feeding for health intuitively within the landscape so we nurture the farmed and natural diversity - we can watch them follow the seasons and cycles when they are out - browsing trees and hedgerows, seeking out cleavers or brambles when they feel that they need them or bingeing on crab apples.
The animals - The cows
The cows here are the heart of the farm - generations of mothers and daughters going back to the foundation herd of Ayrshires that Patrick founded in 1973. They are suited and adapted to the challenges and opportunities of living self-sufficiently on this magical hill. An article written for the Sustainable Food Trust newsletter and called Our Place in the Herd explains more.
Calf care
Our’s is a scale where we can ensure an interconnectedness within our cow community. Throughout the housed period, in winter, cows, calves and young stock are all on the same yard. This is adjacent to the milking parlour ensuring a continuous flow of connectivity and contact, even during the grazing season when the older groups are out at grass.
We try to find the best way to manage the dilemma of cow/calf separation in dairying. On our farm, at calving, the calf will be either an Ayrshire heifer, a beef cross or an Ayrshire male, depending on the bull or semen used at service. All calves will stay with their mother for the first few days, in order to get the colostrum and maternal care needed during those first days. Sometimes, we have to separate sooner and feed the colostrum by bottle if the calf has not got the hang of suckling or if the cow does not allow it to, which can also happen.
Once the calf is strong enough, we aim to suckle all Ayrshire heifer calves until weaning at 12 weeks - they will eventually join the milking herd. This may be with their mother, or more likely in batches of two, three or four on a foster mother, who will have enough milk for all of them. They will be cared for as a group, and the suckler cow will come in before milking to suckle them. This becomes a routine that calves and suckler cow all understand very quickly and the calves thrive. It also ensures that there is bonding between cow and calves but also between the calves in the suckling group - friendships that endure beyond weaning and into adulthood.
Beef crosses are either suckled or fed milk in a teat bucket from their mother or another recently calved cow. This is because they will go to market or to neighbouring beef farmers at 3 to 5 weeks old, sold as fattening animals or beef suckler cows and will need to be familiar with bucket feeding.
Ayrshire bull calves have no commercial value in the market place and yet they are a valuable element of sustainable dairy farming. We rear ours here in the same way as the heifer calves until around ten to fifteen months, after which we slaughter and butcher them as ‘rose veal’ which is a delicious nutrient-dense meat. Find out more on our MEAT page
