Welcome back to our latest news page!
What a busy few weeks we’ve had on the farm! This week we have turned our attention to harvesting grass for silage.
It takes a full team to to mow, swath and chop the grass. There is also a team of our tractor drivers with trailers to haul the grass back to the farmyard where is it tipped into the silage clamp. Trevor works on the pit ‘buckraking’ which pushes the grass into a big pile, and it is driven over ‘rolling the pit’ to squeeze out as much air as possible to maintain the quality of the grass as it is stored to use over the winter.
The last job is to cover the silage with a large sheet, weighed down with gravel bags, to keep the silage airtight.
150 acres of rye grass
We grow 150 acres of grass for silage. It is a fast growing, sugar-rich rye grass, providing energy and protein as ad-lib forage. The first cut is the best quality and fed to the milking cows. Later cuts are fed to dry cows and young heifers. We target to harvest 4 cuts of the grass and if the weather conditions are good for the growing season we can get a 5th.
British built JCB 419s
The JCB 419s has a large shovel called a buckrake for pushing the cut grass into the pit ready for storage. The 419s has 195 bhp and is 10,998kgs! She is one of a range of agricultural vehicles manufactured at the JCB plant in Stafforshire.
Mawley Milk has a 'Moo Tube' Channel!
In June we launched our first video on You Tube (we have renamed Moo Tube!). Over the coming months we will be building playlists of Frequently Asked Questions, Arable Farming, Renewable Energy, Mawley Milk, and behind the scenes of our farming life. We would love to know what you like to see; please get in touch and let us know! If you like what you see please subscribe and give us a thumbs up to receive a notification when a new video is uploaded. A link to our You Tube channel can be found here
