North Bankhead Farm is ran by fourth generation farmer Willie Waugh. Willie has been farming for the last 40 years after leaving school. He was in a family partnership for the first 18 years, and then he has been running the farm himself for the last 22 years. Willie milks a herd of 140 British Friesians on Fullwood Robots and runs 230 of his own heifer replacements for the dairy herd, as well as beef stores. He has also just started fattening bull beef from British Blues, Limousin and Aberdeen Angus. Working closely with NWF ruminant nutritionist, Annabell More, Willie has improved Herd Performance, Health and Calving Index.
Willie was an early adopter of milking robots, installing two Fullwood robots back in 2005, which are still running to this day in their original format, celebrating 20 years of robot milking. “Although at the time, I was an early adopter of robots, in hindsight Icouldn’t have made a better choice for thefuture of the farm. Our remote location made it difficult to find reliable, long-term milking staff. To combat the labour issues and provide flexibility I decided that although the initial cost is high, there becomes a breakeven point versus staffing cost,” says Willie.
The herd is turned out to grass each morning, with 24 hour access to robots and partial mixed ration (PMR), before being brought in at 3pm from May-September depending on the Scottish summer weather.
Driving Herd Performance
Willie is currently taking delivery of Milkline 17, a 17% protein nut, along with a bespoke blend containing NWF Ultra Soy and Ultra Pro-R, both of which have been key driving factors for the continued increase in yields and herd health. British Friesians are known for being an easy-fleshing breed, NWF Ultra Soy is used to provide high levels of bypass protein and reduce over-conditioning in late lactating cows. It also supports milk production in the final 100 days prior to drying off. “Our rolling yearly average across the last five years has now peaked at over 9000 litres a year with the calving index down to 364 and a new low of only 7/120 cows with cases of mastitis, I’ve also only had to treat four cows with antibiotics at drying off this past year,“ adds Willie.
In 2025, Willie took three cuts of grass, alongside growing rye to feed this Winter. Willie has historically grown around 30 acres of pea and bean arable silage as it offers high levels of protein and keeps purchased feed costs down where possible, rotating the fields yearly on a five year basis to help soil quality regenerate. Willie has also invested in a 1.5 million gallon slurry lagoon to store all slurry for the winter, so he can make better use of it at the right time of year and help reduce boughtin fertiliser. The farm has also put up a new youngstock rearing shed and changed its current dairy cow shed layout.
Willie has also worked closely with Annabell to focus on Cow Signals. “I’ve made a number of changes to our farm set up and have been following the Cow Signals Diamond. We have reviewed Feed, Water, Light, Air, Rest and Space. The shed layout has been re-worked giving the cows more cubicle space and I have made the water troughs more accessible to help keep water intakes high. I have improved the ventilation and light in the shed, and I keep it as open as possible during the warmer weather to keep humidity and heat low. The
advice and support from NWF has been excellent in all aspects of the herds nutrition and management. Annabell also regularly analyses our fresh grass and silage samples, as well as completing mineral analysis to ensure the herd is performing at their best,” concludes Willie.
NWF Agriculture would like to thank Willie for his continued business.