Harnessing tech and hoping for the best (Oct 25)

Investing in automation is just part of the plan to protect one family-run business. But even the best laid plans could be derailed by tax legislation

TEXT RACHAEL PORTER

Investing generations of time and passion, as well as capital, in developing a 90-cow pedigree herd has been key to the continued success of Tom Barrett’s family’s Buckinghamshire-based dairy business.

Tom’s grandfather, Ray, milked cows on his farm in Warwickshire and was joined by Tom’s father, Reg, when he left school at 15 in 1950. Reg founded the Rettbar pedigree prefix, with a handful of his own pedigree cattle, before taking on his own county council dairy holding in 1970 in Mursley, Buckinghamshire.

In 1975 the county council moved him to the family’s current farm, based in Tingewick, where they contributed to setting up a new unit for the herd, and in 1994 the family bought the holding. The Barrett’s kept the land they owned in Warwickshire and used the unit for rearing youngstock.

“It was a 50-mile round trip to the 40-hectare heifer-rearing unit, so not ideal, but it worked for more than 20 years,” says Tom, who now farms in partnership with his wife Claire. “And we needed the additional space there if we were to milk and manage the size of herd we wanted to expand to at the new unit.”

Neighbouring unit

Today, thankfully, heifers are now reared at a unit that’s just four miles from the main Tingewick unit, which was bought in 2006 with the proceeds from selling the land in Warwickshire. “We were finally in a position to buy the home farm in 1994 and when Woodside Farm, the neighbouring unit, came up for sale it was a ‘once in several generations’ opportunity. So we had to go for it. We certainly don’t miss all that travelling between units,” says Tom.

Reg is now 90 years old and retired. He still lives with Tom and Claire at the farm and he continued to work with the herd until he was 84. “He’s seen huge changes in farming – his generation has probably seen the greatest technological transformations in agriculture. He worked with horses that pulled ploughs, milked through a bale and sold milk in churns. And, at the other extreme, he’s seen robots milking cows here and the leap in technology and automation to support cow management, health and welfare. It’s mind blowing. No other generation will see that level and pace of innovation again.”

Despite the huge leaps in technology and cattle breeding, the unit currently faces an unprecedented challenge – the introduction of the Government’s Farm Inheritance Tax.

“There’s the potential there, if either of my daughters are keen to join the business, but it’s not a key driver for me as I work towards running a profitable and sustainable business – and continue to develop the pedigree lines in the herd,” he says.

Succession plan

That said, the Farm Inheritance Tax, if the Government refuses to reconsider, could wipe out that option. “We did everything, as a family and business, that we were advised to do and it’s a bitter pill to swallow,” says Tom. “Dad got his affairs in order several years ago and we drew up a fair and comprehensive succession plan. Rectory Barn Farm will be left to my sisters, with a clause that I can run the dairy herd here until I want to retire. But, under the new inheritance tax laws, it would have to be sold to pay the tax – once my sisters inherit the farm that tax is due. So I won’t have the option to continue to farm it.”

Tom, like many producers, is in limbo and he’s also frustrated because some of the investments made on the unit – including that made in robots – were made with a 15-year return in mind.

And then there are the cows to think about – the bloodlines that his father began investing and developing back in the 1960s – 65 years of careful selection and hard work.

“Dad registered the prefix in 1966. He started by buying two cows from a neighbouring pedigree herd, when he was just 17, back in 1952. And he’d built the herd up to 21 head by the late-1960s, despite my grandfather’s resistance to ‘change’ and a switch to a pedigree-breeding route,” explains Tom.

Pedigree breeding

It was, this resistance to change that ultimately led to Reg setting up his own herd and unit. “He wanted to milk better cows that produced more milk and had greater value. He was very passionate about pedigree breeding.”

 Good breading: the herd comprises strong cows with plenty of capacity

Tom shares this passion and is currently focused on breeding cows to suit the units switch to a more automated approach.

Rear-teat placement and teat length are more important than they were a few years ago when selecting sires since the Barrett’s installed two GEA robots three years ago. These replaced a 10:10 herringbone parlour, which was first installed in 1975 and had been upgraded and expanded many times since.

In 2021 Tom and Claire decided that something had to change as they were milking seven hours a day, and agreed that robots were the way forward. The unit’s two robots were retro fitted into an existing shed, with much of the building work carried out by Tom to help keep the cost down. He estimates that the whole project cost less than £300,000.

Calf rearing: an automatic milk-feeding system was installed in March

Selection gates mean that milkers in this all-year-round calving herd still go out to graze during the summer. Herd average yield is 9,800 litres, at 4.35% butterfat and 3.28% protein, with a somatic cell count of 180,000 cells/ml. This average yield is slightly lower than it should be, according to Tom, adding that it usually exceeds 10,000 litres. “But we’re milking a high proportion of heifers at the moment, after a recent bTB breakdown and cull. There are currently 32 heifers in the herd, which is a greater number than usual. And there are also a lot of second calvers in the herd. There’s a lot of potential to tap into going forward.”

Housed system

The herd is fed once a day, when fully housed, a ration comprising 70% grass and 30% maize silage. This supports maintenance plus 28 litres and individual cows are then topped up through the robots with a 18% non-soya protein concentrate.

When selecting sires, Tom is also looking to breed cows that are strong and ‘substantial’ with plenty of body depth and capacity. Good legs and feet are a must, obviously, as is rump angle.

Uniformity is also important and one of the reasons why there are never more than five or six sires in the AI flask at any one time. Tom does all the AI, with the help of CowManager tags, and also carefully matches each cow or heifer to the most suitable sire. “I mostly go by eye. Having a moderate-sized herd means we know the cows really well, so it’s simpler to make a good match than it may be when managing a larger herd.”

Despite on-going worries about farm inheritance tax and succession plans, Tom continues to streamline the business with a focus on adopting tech to support herd health, fertility and productivity.

He has recently installed a Hoofcount automatic footbath. The cows walk through this seven times a day and already, just four months later, the level of digital dermatitis in the herd has decreased from 27% to less than 7% and it’s still falling. An automatic feed pusher and an automatic calf feeder were installed in March 2025.

A HerdVision camera was also installed at the robot exit to help monitor mobility issues and body condition scores. This has helped to reduce lameness incidence and health issues, and supports farm-assurance requirements.

“We used to see a lot of sole ulcers, possibly because cows were standing around for long period on concrete waiting to be milked, but this system, coupled with the robots, has seen cases of lameness drop significantly as we see very few cases now,” says Tom.

Automated route

“With labour scarce and the day-to-day running of the herd to focus on, automation is the way to go. Dad was never keen – he wasn’t happy about the robots and wondered what I’d do all day. But dairying is very different to how it was in his day. There’s so much office work and red tape. Data, record keeping, farm assurance – it’s never ending. And higher yielding cows demand higher level management. So equipment and tech that supports this is a must,” he adds.

So, for now, Tom will continue to manage and grow the herd and business as efficiently as possible. And whatever happens in the next few years – and whether the Government sees sense and scraps the tax or not – Tom does know what his future will be cow shaped. “Worst case scenario, and we have to sell Rectory Barn Farm to pay a huge inheritance tax bill, I will continue pedigree dairy breeding,” he says.

“One option would be to run a small nucleus breeding herd, at Woodside Farm, to continue to develop our best bloodlines. That could work, even with the unit’s limited infrastructure. I have a lot more I’d like to achieve with the cow families and blood lines that we have. And I’m a long way off retirement yet.”