OUR System
We provide the highest standards of welfare and animal husbandry for the production of quality, home-produced meat. Our goal is to provide a thriving environment that implements best practice at every stage of production. We are proud to supply up to 6000 finished cattle a year for the UK market, working alongside the industry’s leading organisations to maximise animal health, safety and well-being.
As soon as our carefully selected animals arrive at Laughtons they enter an animal and user-friendly handling system that has been specially designed and built to make their arrival as stress free and simple as possible.
Here they are EID (electronic) tagged, weighed, wormed, given vital trace elements and given a thorough individual inspection. Each travels with an individual passport, and this is scanned into our farm computer system along with all the other information we have, including medical records.
These records are a vital part of our management system, and allow us, through the EID, to record everything that happens to each individual animal, such as monitor weight gain, for example, which in turn helps to tell us which animals perform the best in our outdoor system.
Once recorded, the animals are moved to their freshly-straw-bedded large pens where they have plentiful space and shelter for maximum comfort. To minimise stress, animals remain in the same pen, within the same animal group, during their time on the farm.
All groups are inspected daily, and on the rare occasion that an animal needs treatment, it is carefully transferred to a separate treatment or ‘hospital’ area where it remains until fully recovered.
Clean and deep straw bedding in all of our pens ensures the cattle are comfortable all year round, with shelter provided by high large bales that form a natural barrier against the elements. Water troughs are cleaned regularly, and they are fed once a day to appetite.
A nutritionist formulates a balanced, healthy and appetising diet, with the ingredients sourced from local farms and factories when available. This includes bread crusts and dough, vegetables and co-products such as wheat distillers.
Manure is removed from the pens on a regular basis, so the animals always have access to clean and dry bedding, and spread on to neighbouring land, providing a nutrient-rich, organic fertiliser for crop production.
Trained and experienced staff select the animals for finishing, usually at a weight of around 580-600kgs. They are weighed and sorted back through the handling system and then quietly loaded for their journey to the processor.