![]() ![]() Keith is confident his son will be successful. The majority of the farm shares were handed over to James recently following Keith’s 60th birthday. #DIAREY ONLYFANS UPGRADE#“We have improved grass production so that we can upgrade to at least 360 cows and help to mitigate the loss of the single farm payment.” “Now that we have lowered the herd stocking level it has given us the opportunity to improve pasture by reseeding and two years ago we implemented a plan to reseed 70 acres every year. “The herd grew rapidly – so much so that our heifers are now contract reared from three months,” said Keith. Today the family runs their own home breed, crossing Jersey bulls with large Holstein cows for the larger cows and using the New Zealand Friesian for the smaller cows. “We ran a fine herd at first, because it was possible to access cows that were cheap to purchase and would calve in the spring.” ![]() “In the first year we milked 128 cows on a herd group constantly,” said Keith. The search was over and the family then proceeded to build the first swing over parlour in Wales in 1999. Eventually he made contact at a dairy show with a man who imported milking parlours from New Zealand. James favoured a “cheap and cheerful” swing over parlour but no manufacturer in this country could supply one. The new venture meant sacrificing the beef and sheep enterprises in order to accommodate a large dairy herd – and a new and larger milking parlour. I realised then that if I wanted to keep any friends I’d better shut up about it,” he said during a visit to the farm by officials from the Farmers’ Union of Wales. “I had a negative reaction from everybody. ![]() Keith said he became so excited about it that he could not stop telling friends and neighbours about this new way of making money. “Little did I know what he had in mind, and it took him a few months to persuade us of a Kiwi system of milk production that we had never heard of before.” I wanted him to have an input into what direction we would go so we waited until he returned from New Zealand. “I didn’t want to do all the hard work myself and hand everything over to him on a plate. “With him coming home and an extra man already working on the farm we knew that we had to step up a gear,” said Keith. And his parents were also ready and waiting. When he returned from his year away, James, now 34, a former agriculture student at the Welsh Agricultural College in Aberystwyth, was ready to start working on the family farm. Now it is a dairy farm managed under the Kiwi system of farming based on pasture and grazing. The farm at Caeau Newydd, Dryslwyn, near Carmarthen, was then a 400-acre mixed stock dairy, beef and sheep farm. He persuaded his parents Keith and Linda Hughes to change their enterprise, and set them on a path that looks to have secured the future. JAMES HUGHES brought more than a little bit of New Zealand back to Carmarthenshire when he returned home after a gap year working on a Kiwi dairy farm. ![]()
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