Two dairy farming enterprises have been named as finalists in this year’s Royal Northern Agricultural Society (RNAS) good farming practice award.
The award, which is sponsored by Aberdeenshire Council, celebrates a farmer in the region who is showing good practice in his or her farming business.
Once nominations and entries were received, farms were visited by a judge who drew up a shortlist of two finalists.
This year’s judge was Alister Laing from Glenrinnes Estate.
His two finalists are: the Colquhoun family at Alex Colquhoun Ltd, Dendolrum Farm, Inverbervie; and the Hendry family at Wester Manbeen Farm, near Elgin.
The Colquhoun family – Gregor and his wife Faye, along with his parents Blair and Judy – is milking 750 cows on a high-input, high-output system at Dendoldrum.
The cows are housed all year round and milked either through a traditional parlour or by one of the farm’s six milking robots.
Yields average around 37 litres per cow per day and milk is sold to Muller, with around two thirds destined for Tesco.
Gregor said: “The motto here is that a happy cow leads to a happy farmer, and prevention is better than cure.
“We are always striving to improve cow comfort, cow enjoyment and cow happiness.”
Meanwhile, the Hendry family – brothers David and Alick [corr] and their parents George and Barbara -run a mixed enterprise across around 1,000 acres.
A herd of 185 organic cows is milked via robotic milkers and all milk is marketed through the Organic Milk Suppliers Co-operative.
The family usually buyers in around 900 organic lambs for fattening, however a lack of grass means this isn’t on the cards for 2018.
David said the farm also carries 500 acres of grass, 170 acres of barley, 40 acres of oats and 15 acres of forage peas – all of which are grown as feed for the cows.
He said the family also runs a conventional unit near Keith where 100 acres of malting barley and 100 acres of seed potatoes are grown.
The winner of the award will be revealed in next week’s Press and Journal Farming.