Beanley

The Beanley herd is located in North Northumberland & forms part of the 4,050ac Hedgeley Estate owned by the Carr-Ellison family since 1786. The Belted Galloway & Galloway herds were established in 2004 following a decision to sell our conventional suckler herd in favour of a lower input breed.

Over the last 11 years we have built up the Belted Galloway and Galloway herds and now put approximately 30 pedigree Belted Galloways and 85 pedigree Galloways to the bull every year. We also have 1250 North Country Mule ewes which are put to the Texel tup to lamb 1st April and 1250 Swaledale and Blackface ewes that are put to the Blue-faced Leicester, Aberfield, Swaledale or Blackface tup to lamb 15th April.

We calve from March to May, with replacement heifers going to the bull at 2 years of age. Our aim is to produce larger more commercial cattle and to do this we selected our bulls very carefully. Speddoch Hubert has been very influential and we are now using Polbae Abel and Broadmeadows Popcorn, both of which are leaving very promising calves.

The cows are over-summered on Beanley Moor and Hedgeley Moor as part of an HLS agreement and all are out-wintered. The yearling cattle are over-summered on the hills above Otterburn. Steers are finished on grass to 30 months then sold to premium outlets. We also sell a number of heifers at two years old for breeding.

We strongly believe in monitoring and analysing the financial and physical performance of our livestock enterprises to ensure consistent effective management. We then benchmark our data to see how we compare with national statistics. For the last 2 years our suckler cows have made a profit of £116/hd, compared to the QMS and EBLEX average of – £210/hd.

We also have farming interests in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia which includes the management of 40,000 acres of high quality arable land. We are currently establishing pilot beef suckler herds of Aberdeen Angus and Galloway.

We are TB 4 yearly testing (last test Feb 2015), BVD accredited since 2006 and Johnes Risk Level 2. We are also screening for Leptospirosis. We are members of the FABBL Farm Assurance Scheme.

Visitors always welcome

See more at http://www.hedgeleyfarms.com/