Anglesey dairy farm brothers recall the days of midnight milking

It wasn’t a lifestyle choice but a necessity to allow time to get the herd milked before the tanker arrived on the farmyard at 6.30am.

Herd size had expanded exponentially when Sion and Gareth came home to farm but what hadn’t grown was the parlour with those bigger numbers milked in a 16/32 swingover, each milking taking a gruelling five and a half hours.

It wasn’t sustainable and changing that situation required major investment with a 60-point rotary parlour installed in 2018.

December 19th 2018 is a date that will be forever etched in the family’s memory as this was the day that the cows were first milked in the rotary. “It made a massive difference,’’ Sion recalls; milking times reduced to under two hours even though there were more cows in the herd.

Cows numbers have peaked at 500 and the acreage farmed 1,200 acres – a vast increase on the 30 cows and 40 acres that Twm started his farming career with when his own father bought Fferam y Llan at Cerrigceinwen, on the island of Anglesey.

Twm with his wife, Nerys, steadily grew the business, buying and renting land as opportunities came their way.

When Sion came home to farm there was significant expansion with cow numbers increasing to 300 to support two families. The second major growth came when Gareth joined the business.

In 2022 the family won the NFU Cymru/NFU Mutual Welsh Dairy Stockperson of the Year Award.

In an area where competition for land is fierce, they have seized every opportunity that has arisen.

Half the land they farm is rented and they take care to be model tenants. “We always look after a place when we farm it, it is one of the reasons why we do get offered farms when they come up,’’ Sion believes.

The business revolves around a closed herd of Holsteins, with an unwavering focus placed on maintaining high performance.

The twice-a-day milked herd is currently averaging 9,500 litres at 4% butterfat and 3.3% protein with the milk processed into mozzarella at the Leprino creamery, formerly Glanbia, at Llangefni.

When the herd is housed, usually in mid-October, the ration is a simple one of grass silage, 0.5kg straw and a blend and topped up with concentrates in the parlour up to a maximum of 8kg.

Soya is no longer fed, replaced by prairie meal and protected rape, which attracts a milk price bonus of 0.4 pence a litre.

Value is added to both slurry and milk.

An average of 40 tonnes of slurry is supplied daily to a nearby digester and some milk is sold direct from a vending machine.

The milk sales started as a Covid lockdown project and it has grown with the introduction of machines providing coffee and snacks, including locally made ice cream and cheesecake.

Although the farm had long hosted visits by the local school, it was the milk vending and the marketing around it that led to a big growth in the number of schools and colleges now visiting – there can be two visits a week.

The Roberts’ don’t charge and give the children free milkshakes, simply enjoying educating the next generation.

It could even be a means of recruiting the future workforce, as one visit illustrated.

“The children ask questions as they go around and I remember one young boy, who must have been about six and whose father ran the local shop, telling me that he was going to come and milk for us one day and sell the milk from his father’s shop,’’ Sion recalls.

The current workforce consists of two full time members of staff, a part-timer and a relief milker for the morning milking.

Sion and Lois’ four daughters, 16-year-old Elliw, Mari, who is 13, Sara, 10, and eight-year-old Beca, are also important members of the team.

“Elliw does tractor work, AI, the calves, everything, Mari too except she is too young to do the AI course,’’ says Sion.

Lois, and Gareth’s fiancée, Gwen, who he will marry on New Year’s Eve, also get involved in work on the farm.

The family work well as a team. “We are so busy we don’t have time to argue!’’ laughs Sion.