Harper graduate sees growing dairy farm success

Harper Adams graduate, Kate Dymond has been strengthening relationships with her local agricultural consultancy to further the success of her dairy farm.

Battledown Farm in North Devon has been in Kate’s family since 1989, working within the dairy industry.  While initially Kate thought she may want to work away from the family farm, after returning from university, Kate decided to apply the knowledge she gained from her agriculture degree to upgrading and improving the facilities around her.  With great ambitions, running the day-to-day of the farm gave her the challenge of managing a business and putting her knowledge of agriculture to the test.

Kate’s main aims for the dairy side of the business are to drive efficiency and improve profitability, all while looking to make overall improvements to the farm as a whole.  To achieve these goals, the farm are collaborating with Thomas Westcott’s Agricultural Consultancy Service who offer bespoke support to farming and agricultural businesses across the South West.  Together they have worked to make the farm more profitable, with upgrades to the barn in October 2018 as well as curating specific business plans.

“Working with the Agricultural Consultancy Service has driven us forward, made us more sustainable and given me more confidence." commented Kate, "We would like to increase our yield by 20% to 9,000 litres per cow, per year … [and] to increase cow comfort, utilise feed and forage better. We will continue to use the information that Thomas Westcott provides to better make decisions about the farm and our business.”