If you have visited Cream o'Galloway recently, you will notice that we are busy constructing a large shed down at the farm.

So what are we up to? 

Well we are one year into a two and half year project, where we are building a whole new modern dairy unit including milking parlour, silage pit and slurry tower to be attached to an anaerobic digester. Putting the slurry through the anaerobic digester will not only improve its value as a fertilizer but also reduce its toxicity to invertebrates. And it will produce lots of electricity and hot water too!

A new cubicle shed will house up to 140 cows with calves, YES CALVES - we will be the first commercial dairy farm in the UK if not the world, to leave the dairy calves on their mothers until they are at least 9 months old. The cows will be milked once a day instead of twice. The calves born in the spring of 2010 will be the first cows to be introduced to our new dairy system in autumn/ winter of 2012 / 2013.

We are doing this to tackle the challenges of animal welfare, climate change, and energy efficiency by producing as much food as possible from grass.

This page will be regularly updated on how the build process is going.

Dairy Photo Gallery - Take a look at your Flickr gallery that shows how the dairy has progressed.