Monday 20 June 2016

There is so much to report on that I don't really know where to start - I'm afraid my ipad still won't allow me to do my blog on it anymore which is really annoying as I have to do it from the office computer hence the lack of posts.
The Nuffield weekend was fabulous as usual and great to catch up with everyone. The visits were very interesting with a look around a massive free range egg producer, where I was a little surprised to see how rammed in they were in the chicken house and how few actually make it outside. It certainly wasn't made easy for them and you would have to be a very brave chook to battle your way through hundreds of other chooks to get to the great outside, but I suppose at least they had the choice...(?)  We also went around Westcombe Dairy featuring their artisan award winning cheese, matured for up to 18 months and stored in this massive underground cave. The highlight there was seeing their brand new robot turning the cheeses and giving them a good clean before returning them to their shelves. Incredible technology and the cheese tasted delicious.




The brine in this tank hadn't been changed for 31 years!!

The next day we saw our host, Jack Clayton's lovely somerset farm where he rears 175,000 game birds. I was really surprised how much room they all had and how happy and healthy they looked. A very good business if you have the expertise and stockmanship that Jack clearly has as if you don't spot a problem soon enough then it can snowball incredibly quickly and the losses can be huge. A lovely lunch and then we all went our separate ways for another year.