The Animals

The Animals

In This video, Emma explains about how cows produce milk. Click here to watch more video’s on ‘Why Farming Matters’

The Dogs

Our two working dogs, Nellie and Fly, absolutely love visitors on the farm. The dogs have given many people a lot of pleasure as they are very friendly and obviously enjoy human attention!

They have been a calming influence for children with more challenging behaviour and have been great at building confidence for those afraid of dogs. The dogs run loose with visitors, however, they can be kept on a lead and away from those who are worried about dogs.

Chickens

At Sandfield Farm we keep chickens so we can have fresh eggs to bake cakes with. We also like to have a few pigs which are fattened and used to make lovely free range sausages. The chickens and pigs are in pens at one end of the wood, so they can have shelter and shade from the trees.

Cattle 

Our core business is milk production, over the two farms we have about 400 head of cattle. The majority of the cows are black and white dairy cows which are a mixture of Holstein and Friesian breeds. In order to take advantage of the benefits of ‘hybrid vigour’ we do introduce other breeds into the herd breeding, such as:

• Jersey = higher milk fat producing more creamy milk
• Swedish Red = good foot strength, important for walking to the milking parlour twice a day
• Montbeliarde = high milk protein which is good for cheese making

We use Artificial Insemination to get the cows pregnant, however, sometimes this is not always successful and so we have three Aberdeen Angus bulls for natural service.

Wildlife

As well as the farm animals, there are plenty of wild animals on the farm who benefit from the wildlife areas we have developed on the farms.