“ADF has helped us create a more consistent milking routine”

One of our customers Fen Farm Dairy in Bungay, Suffolk are best known for their award-winning raw milk Brie-style cheese, Baron Bigod. (It’s actually the cheese that we offer visitors to our exhibition stands at the events we attend). Having said this, they do a lot more than just cheese, with their Bungay Raw Cultured Butter and Raw Milk being hugely popular with their customers also.

Fen Farm Dairy has been having great success recently, including recently winning awards such as; Entrepreneurs of the Year award in the Business Excellence Awards 2019, and Suffolk Food at Drink Hero in the Eat Suffolk Food & Drink Awards 2019.

Their Raw Milk Revolution was a hot topic on BBC Radio 4’s Farming Today section in March, and they have also been named as one of The Independent’s 12 Best British Cheeses for 2019! To top it off, they actually produced the cheese that was served at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding breakfast back in May 2018.

The farm that is run by the Crickmore family, who are now taking big steps in order to make themselves more environmentally friendly by only providing re-useable glass bottles for their milk vending machine.

In 2015, the Crickmores decided to install our Automatic Dipping and Flushing system on their 28/28 Westfalia Herringbone to help increase the efficiency of the milking process, and they couldn’t be happier with the results. “We tend to save around 15 to 30 minutes per milking session, which adds up to a considerable amount of time saved per week.”

“The biggest benefits we have seen since installing the ADF System are maintaining consistency and the flow of milk during milking as well as saving labour time. Due to this saving of labour time, we have also seen a saving on labour costs as well.”

The health of their herd has also improved since installing ADF. They have seen a reduction in mastitis cases, their somatic cell counts have improved, and they have seen a reduction in antibiotic use. “We believe ADF has played a part in this but we have also made other changes that have also helped.”
They currently have around 300 cows in their herd and milk twice a day, producing roughly 8,200 litres of milk per cow, per year.

Overall, the team at Fen Farm Dairy are very pleased with the ADF System. “Our staff members think the system is good and are pleased we have it. In the summer the iodine post dip works really well. The cows seem comfortable and settled and the system fits in well with our milking parlour.”

“We believe that the ADF System has helped us create a more consistent milking routine and reduces the time spent on each milking session, which is why we would recommend it to other farmers.”