Milking gets mobile at Ford Farm

Ford Farm of the UK has recruited Prospect Farming as its latest milk supplier. The supplier is a new dairy business that has revived the age-old Hosier method of milking – a process that takes the milking parlour out into the fields instead of the cows to the milking parlour. The farm is a partnership between two West Country farmers, Tom Foot and Neil Grigg. They have rented a 900-acre farm between Bridport and Dorchester for a 580 strong herd of Jersey and Friesian cross-bred dairy cattle, and signed an exclusive contract with Ford Farm to supply milk for the production of award-winning PDO West Country Farmhouse Cheddar. Foot and Grigg say they believe they are the only dairy farmers in the UK to milk in this way on such a large scale.

The Hosier process was a method developed back in the 1920s by Arthur Hosier, a Wiltshire Farmer, in order that he could keep his cows free ranging all year round by milking them outside in portable milking bails.

“We have invested in a mobile milking parlour system which we take out into the fields to where the cows are grazing,” says Foot about the process. “This has all sorts of benefits for the cows. It means we don’t have to walk them, sometimes considerable distances, to the milking parlour. This helps to keep the cows in excellent condition enabling them to produce quality milk with a high butterfat and protein content.”

“In addition, our milk is produced only from grazed grass and is delivered to the Ford Farm Dairy within a couple of hours, which ensures our free range milk is as fresh as it gets.”

Foot adds: “We didn’t have the capital required to invest in a conventional dairy farming system so by speaking to other helpful dairy farmers and thinking laterally we have developed an alternative idea based on an historic concept. When we researched Hosier’s dairy systems, we knew this was the route we wanted to take.”