Championing ‘Cow-with-Calf’

Run by the Capewell family in Peckforton, Cheshire, Peckforton Farm Dairy is a cow-with-calf dairy farm selling raw and pasteurised milk. Angus D. Birditt visits the farm to meet AJ Capewell, the sixth generation on the farm, who is leading the farm’s transition towards keeping the mother cows with their calves, focusing on pasture fed principles and high animal welfare.

ADB: AJ, tell us about Peckforton Farm Dairy

AC: So, we are Peckforton Farm Dairy in Peckforton, Cheshire. We run a herd of about 130 MRI cows with their calves in two blocks in the year, calving in the spring and in the autumn. We keep all the calves all the way through, meaning we rear them for either beef or going into the milking herd if they are a replacement heifer. We have only recently transitioned to keeping the cows and calves together due to a number of reasons, from how much the calves thrive with their mums, to how happy the cows are.

MRI cows, you say, which breed is this?

The name of the breed MRI comes from where the cows originated, so named after the Meuse, the Rhine and the Issel rivers in the Netherlands. The MRI breed is known for their high quality of milk, they don’t produce loads, but what they do produce is high in butterfat and protein, high in the type of protein which is great for making cheese. They are also very hardy cows so can live for a long time, good outside and good on their feet, very quiet and calm in nature.

How has the transition from feeding the cows concentrate to mostly pasture been?

As we have slowly moved to a more pasture-based farming system, we have found that our cows really thrive on it. The MRI breed suits a pasture fed diet. You know when we were feeding them more concentrate, we found that pushing them harder to produce more yield, it wasn’t doing their welfare any good, seeing a lot more problems like in their feet or condition. Plus, these cows wanted to be outside, they’d prefer to be in the field, you know! We keep them in over winter as short as possible, normally in for around 2 months, but as soon as the first sunny day comes in around February, the cows are waiting at the gate to go. They very much dictate their grazing season, same at the end of the season, they will wait at the end of the season, and only when there is horizontal rain they are like ‘OK, we’ve had enough, let’s go in!’.

Peckforton Farm Dairy is a ‘cow-with-calf’ dairy, what does that mean?

Yes, we are a ‘cow-with-calf’ dairy. What this means is that we let the cows raise their own calves to a more natural weaning age, the point at which the calf would naturally come off the mother’s milk. So, rather than weaned soon after birth, the cows keep the calves for 4-6 months. The cows rear them on; look after their little ones, and what we have found is that they do a stunning job of it, way better than us and it suits them being mums.

It is difficult to facilitate, it’s not been easy to farm this year. You do get a lot less milk when you do a cow-with-calf system because at the end of the day they are producing milk for the calf and you are second best but I personally feel that is what it should be. It’s our role to work best with that.

To learn about the ‘cow-with-calf’ system, we visited The Ethical Dairy in Scotland where we learnt a lot. When we can back, we initially started the system off with just three mother cows and their calves to see how it could be done, and what we saw was that the mothers produced very strong calves.

The peak milk yield we have is around March to May and September to November, due to our block calving. Block calving omits competition in calves, but it can fluctuate the milk quantity.

How can someone support what you are doing?

You can come to the farmgate to buy our raw milk and we also sell whole and semi-skimmed pasteurised milk, just message us on social media or through our website to pre-order. We also sell to wholesale to a lot of coffee shops in Chester and Liverpool, the baristas love our milk as it is high in protein (good for froth) and butterfat (keeps in structure well).

Follow their journey here.

Championing 'Cow-with-Calf'

Article & Photography by Angus D. Birditt

Interview with AJ Capewell

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