In the 40+ years of beef farming, Lawn Farm’s head of cattle has grown by over 1,200%! We spoke to Colin, Steven and Andrew Davies to find out what gives them a cutting edge.

Spanning 2,000 acres of beautiful Shropshire land, Lawn Farm has been in the Davies family for more than 70 years.

For all of those seven decades, Lawn Farm has grown barley, wheat, maize and fodder beet as well as keeping chickens and rearing calves. Today, the farm is managed by Colin and Linda Davies, along with their sons Steve and Andrew.

This year marks over forty years of the family deciding to stop rearing calves and focus on beef cattle instead.

Lawn Farm has come a long way since then. The Davies’ started out with 300 head of beef cattle, today, the farm sends 4,000 per year to ABP Abattoir in Shropshire and has 1,200 to 1,300 cattle on the farm at any one time.

“We’ve certainly seen the beef cattle part of our farm increase a lot over the years, and I think we’ve developed a really good reputation for well-fed and well looked after cattle,” says Andrew. “The guys at ABP say they can tell which cattle are ours just by looking at them! I think part of this is down to how we raise them and how we feed them.”

For the last ten years, the Davies’ have been using their own special mix, and this is where their Strautmann Verti-Mix appears to be giving them a cutting edge.

“The cattle just love our mix,” says Andrew. “In the winter, we’re adding fodder beet and potatoes if we can get hold of them to the silage. In the summer, we’re mixing maize, grass, brewers’ grain, cooked chips, biscuit meal, bread and barley. It’s a sustainable approach all year round and far cheaper than buying the mix in. The quality is ten times better, and the cattle eat it so much faster.

By using the Verti-Mix, we’re getting a really consistent product, and you can see this all the way down the line. There’s no sorting and they just can’t get enough of it.”

Not many beef farmers are utilising the Verti-Mix in the same way as the Davies, who are taking advantage of both their arable crop and Strautmann’s patented knife adjustment system, which allows the twin augers to be set precisely to suit the conditions and deliver maximum effectiveness from the Strautmann Root Crop Knives, which have been fitted instead of scrapers or standard knives.

Part of the Verti-Mix Expert Double series, the 3101 model, which the Davies family own, offers a high mixing capacity within a compact machine. Its two Intensive Mixing System (IMS) mixing augers are housed in a cleverly designed container, the geometry of which enables ideal vertical and horizontal mixing in which the fodder tumbles rather than slides, delivering a very short mixing time.

The Davies’ went for a front crossover conveyor with a hydraulically folding conveyor extension, which means the driver can easily see the mix being discharged, and as the conveyor is connected to the container, any residue on the conveyor is also weighed to ensure the exact amount of fodder is released.

The Verti-Mix Expert 3101 that Colin and Andrew use today is the farm’s second Strautmann mixer.

“When we were first developing our mix, we had another make of mixer, but that was pathetic in comparison. We struggled to feed 50 cows with it! It was so slow and really unreliable. I don’t know how we managed to use it for the two years we owned it!

“We bought our first Strautmann Verti-Mix in 2015 and worked it really hard until we decided it was time for a new one.

“We chose to stick with Strautmann for several reasons. They’re really well made and do a great job – we can mix 30 to 35 tonnes quickly and feed 1,200 cows in two hours.

“The strength of the tub is really impressive, and it’s much more reliable than what we were using before. The Verti-Mix holds more, chops more, and cuts really well – the blades are really good. The front conveyor gives a consistent output, and you can see the quality of the mix as the whole line is even.

“We also get fantastic backup from our Strautmann dealer and OPICO.”

As the success of Lawn Farm shows, beef farms can expand rapidly, which is where Verti-Mix’s patented extensions can come in useful. As the need for more feed grows, adding either the 180 or 360mm extension to the top of the Verti-Mix allows the user to increase the amount of feed, giving the user a real advantage in terms of saving both time and money, two things the Davies have seen first-hand.

“I’d say the Verti-Mix has saved us a lot of money. It’s hard to say how much, but we know it mixes more quickly than the first mixer we had, and as they say, time is money! It’s also very fuel efficient.

“Since we got our first Verti-Mix, we have been able to feed more cows more quickly, which has allowed us to increase the head of cows we can handle.”

A lot has changed in the 40 years since the Davies family moved from calves to beef. With today’s challenging economic climate, farmers are doing all they can to reduce input costs, improve efficiencies and gain a cutting edge wherever possible, including capitalising on the Verti-Mix’s ability to finely chop roots so that they can be added to silage!