Our farm
Sandy Hill Farm is 110 acres of pasture – a mix of historic parkland and diverse herbal leys. We are taking a holistic, nature friendly approach to our farming hoping that our farming practices will revitalise the pastures and bring back wild-life to our fields!
PASTURE FOR LIFE CERTIFIED – HEALTHY CATTLE AND HEATLHY MEAT
We are very proud to be certified Pasture for Life producers - this means that you can be sure that our beef is 100% grass fed and raised to the high welfare standards demanded by the Pasture Fed Livestock Association.
This guarantees that our herd only ever eats pasture and forage for the whole duration of their lives. The benefits of this natural diet, rich in nutritious herbs and diverse grasses, are numerous. From the high welfare and health of the cattle, to the biodiversity that this system of raising animals supports, not forgetting the human health benefits of eating pasture-fed produce.
There are huge inefficiencies when feeding grain to ruminants – remember that these animals are not ‘designed’ to eat grain. It is considered that a good conversion rate for grain fed animals is a rate of 3:1, that is 3 kilogrammes of grain fed for every 1kg meat produced.
When used correctly grassland can be used to store and capture carbon – the carbon footprint of pasture fed beef farms can be significantly lower than farms where cereal crops are grown to feed ruminants.
Compared to meat from grain fed animals, our beef from 100% pasture-fed animals has lower total fat levels and saturated fat levels; it has higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids and a lower, more balanced and healthier ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids; it has higher vitamin and mineral levels; and is rich in vitamins A and E as well as calcium, magnesium and potassium.
You may see the ‘grass-fed’ label appearing on supermarket shelves but legally it has no weight and means that the animal has eaten grass for only at least 51% of its life. Choose Pasture for Life certified produce to be certain of 100%!
MOB GRAZING and BIODIVERSITY
Since we started farming at Sandy Hill, we have been mob grazing our cattle which involves keeping the herd in a high stocking density using electric fences to create smaller paddocks and turning them out onto new pasture regularly (usually every day they get fresh grass), then leaving the paddock for a long rest period.
In this way, the system mimics ruminants that are grazing in the wild where they are bunched together (for protection from predators) and are constantly on the move. This is how our grasslands evolved and it promotes healthier livestock (less worm burdens etc.) and a more diverse, healthy and quickly recovering sward.
The high stocking density encourages the livestock to graze everything and not to be selective. The idea is that they eat the top third or so of the forage plant, trample a third into the ground and a third of the plant is left which can quickly recover. The trampled third is returned to the soil along with the manure as organic matter, building soils and capturing carbon at the same time. These inputs that the cattle provide for the soil help to feed the micro-organisms found there which provide nutrients for the growing pasture in return.
The higher organic matter in the soil helps capture water in the soil, making the land much more resilient to drought and indeed helps stop run off in times of flooding too. Equally, it encourages the development of a good soil structure which helps promote better drainage.
Because the paddocks get rested for long periods (cattle are potentially only on 3% of land at any one time), wildflowers have time to grow and insect life can flourish which directly supports more birds, reptiles and mammals.
We are already seeing signs that our grazing strategy is improving the health of the soils at Sandy Hill. 60 acres of the farm had been conventional arable and there was little top soil to speak of when we took on the farm. Now down to herbal leys and having been mob-grazed for 3 years we have seen organic matter in the soil increase and have been encouraged by the diversity of wildflower species that are now present – we have even found Pyramidal orchids popping up in the leys. Orchid seeds can only germinate by developing a symbiotic relationship with mycorrhizal fungi and those fungal networks are key to healthy soils (and are rarely present where ploughing and spraying happen regularly).
