Ninezergh Farm

Follow our journey if you are interested in:

• Minimising inefficiencies and reducing overheads
• Managing people effectively and developing a strong team
• Producing as much feed as you can from your forage platform
• Reseeding and renewing grazing - maximising the use of homegrown feed
• Reducing instances of Neospora on your farm
• Understanding your costs
• Achieving a work/life balance

Overview

The Bland family has been tenants at Ninezergh Farm since the 1960s. The farm is now being managed by Adrian Bland in partnership with his wife and father.

The farm employs two general farmworkers. Adrian is part of a discussion group and welcomes other farmers onto his farm for more advice from attendees and to encourage farmers to be more willing to talk to one another. 

Our farm

Based in Levens, Cumbria, the farm is split across four separate blocks with some parkland which has to be managed accordingly. Alongside the dairy herd, there are also 550 sheep and 120 beef animals from the dairy herd which they raise to 24 months old.

Our herd

The herd is currently made up of 120 autumn calving crossbred cows achieving 8,000 litres of milk per cow per year milking twice per day.

Our journey

Their journey has seen them concentrate on reducing cases of Neospora in their herd, a major focus on improving fertility rates with investment in LED daylight lights for cows and bulling heifers and a drive to improve many small contributing factors that lead to major change overall.

Generating a healthy return on tenant capital whilst maintaining a good working environment are other key aims of the farm.

Our key performance figures

Ninezergh Farm openly share their KPIs so you can see how they perform against a number or technical and financial measures.

•  Ninezergh Farm key performance indicators 

Previous meetings and updates

• January 2020 - Ninezergh Farm strategic farm launch - Adrian Bland is joined by 70 local farmers to review the farm's operations and ambitions for the next three years
• November 2020 - Reducing mastitis during the dry period - Exploring the source of mastitis at Ninezergh Farm following a spike in cell count in early lactation identified an issue with the dry cow environment and highlighted potential improvements.
• August 2021 - Grazing strategies for livestock - Understanding his grazing platform and a rotational grazing system is helping Adrian meet growth rate targets
• December 2021 - Mastitis - it's time to make a change - A webinar with Adrian and Dr James Breen where they discuss the improvements made since Adrian adopted the QuarterPRO approach to improve Somatic Cell Count (SCC) and reduce clinical mastitis case incidence in his dairy herd.
• Targeting a low somatic cell count post calving - Adrian has been on a mission to reduce cell counts post calving

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