A Talk with Local Farmer Rob Thornhill

Looking down from Longstone Edge into the fields below, you’ll see cows grazing in February, which you won’t see on most dairy farms at that time of year. These cattle belong to Rob Thornhill, a third generation farmer in Great Longstone. His grandfather was a poultry man, his dad, dairy, and Rob took over the dairy farm and transformed it. After working with grazing cattle in New Zealand decades ago, he saw real benefits to the way they did things there and decided to try them here, and he’s still doing them 25 years later.

Rob uses smaller New Zealand cows, Freesian Jersey Cross breeds, that are bred to graze, with high fat and protein milk yields. New Zealand farmers were forced to reduce costs when their subsidies were removed overnight, which led them to use more grazing and be less reliant on buying feed. Rob is one of about 5% of UK farmers who use this approach. The cows calve in spring, rather than year round, which is a more natural cycle for them. It’s a closed herd–the last new cow was acquired in 1978, and the last stock bull in 2001. This means no live animals are brought into the herd, minimising the risk of disease importation. The genetic pool is maintained diverse by using frozen semen.

Every 12 hours, the cows are moved to fresh fields, to allow the grass to regenerate. He uses electric fences and moves them, manipulating the paddocks as he moves the cattle. It may sound particularly labor-intensive, but, as he says, “It beats having to constantly rebuild stone walls.” Actually, he says, “modern equipment makes moving fences easy, and grass is the cheapest and best feed.” He’s got 250 cows that are milked twice daily, and 86 hectares for grazing, and needs no winter forage. Rob belongs to a farmer-owned European co-op (ARLA) which makes products such as Cravendale milk, Yeo Valley products, Lurpak and Anchor butters, among others.

Rob is currently helping to promote the Peak District Limestone Farmers Group, hoping the group will become a local focus for supporting farmers to combine commercial viability with environmental benefit. Some of the things they do are to encourage wildlife corridors through grazing land, expanding habitats throughout the dales. There is some, albeit limited, government funding to help farmers, such as from Landscape Recovery, the Woodland Trust, and FIPL (Farming In Protected Landscapes). Barn owl protection, fencing, tree planting, dew ponds, are all ways which Rob has made his land more naturally diverse, with the help of government funds.