The Home of Happy Healthy Cross Bred Cows
Our heritage, raised on the love of farming...
Tom’s Father became a tenant farmer on the Rode Hall Estate in 1968. He came to the estate with 30 cows and joined them with the Landlord’s 30 cows and started the Rode Farms Partnership. The family resided and farmed at Rode Home Farm.
Tom was born in 1969 and grew up working on the farm and studied at Reaseheath College. Following college he travelling around NZ and Canada, and then came back to the farm and joined the partnership in 1989 with Sir Richards son Randle, by then the business was a 200 cow herd. The partnership went on to grow to a 600 cow business milking twice a day on 3 farms.
In 2012 the partnership was dissolved and Tom & Karen formed Halton Farms Ltd. A herd of cows was sold to buy out the Rode Farms partnership which left 350 cows being milked on 2 units. In 2015 a new shed was built at Chance Hall Farm and the 2 herds where merged. This meant the heifers could return home from outside rearing to be reared on the other unit (Townsend Farm) which is now the heifer rearing unit.
What's going on at Halton Farms
It's not really about us...
We currently milk 500 cows at Chance Hall Farm and have 300 heifers {residing at Townsend Farm) all waiting to enter the herd. All heifers born here will stay here and milk alongside their Dams, Granddams and Great Granddams. Our beef calves are sold privately or to Market Drayton livestock market.
In 2016 we set up The Milkshack selling Raw Milk from a vending machine. We now also sell , Pasteurised Milk, milkshakes, cheese, Eggs, cakes, butter and many other goodies. This is a great opportunity for us to engage with the general public and show them the farm. We are extremely passionate about animal welfare and do everything in our power to keep our cows happy and healthy.
In 2018 we started farm tours for schools, colleges, universities, Cubs, Scouts and other outside organisations to give people a real view of dairy farming behind the scenes.
