Young Farmer Returns Home Thanks to Black and Whites

The Taylor family have farmed at Digby in Lincolnshire since 1935, running a mainly arable/poultry and grain storage business on the 300-acre holding, but there was insufficient work for son Aidan.

Following his degree in agriculture at Harper Adams University, Aidan worked on a number of local farms but remained keen to set up his own project on the family farm.

After attending a Buitelaar Group open day, Aidan and his father David, saw an opportunity in finishing cattle and a chance for him to return home.

Aidan says:

“Knowing what the calves are going to cost and Buitelaar underwriting the finished animal, means we can calculate what we are likely to earn.”

Adam Buitelaar, chief executive of the Buitelaar Group, says: “Fuelling my passion for supporting young farmers, it is extremely rewarding for us to see new businesses like Aiden’s expanding under our cattle contracts.”

The building work started late in 2018 and the first calves arrived in March 2019, meaning that within a year of starting the project, Aidan was able to sell his cattle and a return on his investments.

Aiden takes on 40 black and white bull calves around 4-5 months old from a Buitelaar rearer and sells on around 40 cattle a month, 10-11 months old at around 44kg liveweight back to Buitelaar so there is a constant turnover and consistent income.

He is currently managing an impressive daily liveweight gain of 1.4kg, but the aim is to push this up to 1.5kg/day.

He says: “We have done everything on a budget, and it is still very much work in progress. But the aim was to make everything as easy as possible, so the whole operation was not too time consuming.”

With the first stage of his business plan now successfully up and running, Aidan is now looking at future expansion.

He says: “We are hoping to put up another building so we can expand numbers. This time I will be looking at buying-in three-week-old calves from one of Buitelaar’s collection centres, rearing them and taking them right through to finishing.

“Not only does this shorten the supply chain, but it gives me the opportunity to make more profit.”

With special thanks to the Farmers Guardian for the full article.