Our CATTLE

I started out with fourteen heifers and the herd has now expanded to over thirty cows. The cattle mostly calve in the winter and spring and then are turned back out onto the grass as soon as possible.

There is something very special about seeing the Ruby Red Devon herd grazing our top fields with Pen y fan and the Black mountains as a backdrop. Our meat has a great taste to it because it is finished on the sweet summer hill grass. The cattle have a vital role on our farm providing dung to fertilise the fields and their habit of browsing through the rougher parts of the farmland helps regenerate the grasses.

Our hill farm is unsuited to being intensively farmed and it has always been farmed traditionally using minimal fertiliser, planting hedges for cover for the wildlife and using the thousands of acres of hill ground adjoining our farm as a summer holiday for our sheep. I am excited to use more regenerational farming practices in the next few years such as rotational grazing where we will be able to maximise our grass growth.