ChewintheCud Podcast
Andrew Jones and Sarah Bolt bring you kitchen table conversations for the dairy industry, produced in the South West of England and listened to around the world. Now in its fifth year, each episode Andrew and Sarah are joined by a specialist from inside or outside the industry to discuss the practical and technical topics that matter to dairy farmers, advisers, and other industry professionals. They want to make you think about what you are doing — and ask yourself whether it could be done differently.
For more information about our podcast visit www.chewinthecud.com/podcast or follow us on Instagram @chewinthecudpodcast, or on Facebook and LinkedIn as ChewintheCud Ltd. You can also email us at podcast@chewinthecud.com.
Episodes
77 episodes
DCAB: Stop Being Afraid of It!
The transition period is the twenty-one days either side of calving. Get it right and the rest of the lactation follows. Get it wrong and you could spend the next ten months firefighting. To kick off Year Five, we're joined by Vicky Ham, Rumina...
Podcast Live - Herbal Leys: From Science to Farm
Herbal leys can feel like a contradiction: you pay for a carefully chosen seed mix and then it refuses to look the same from month to month. That’s exactly why we wanted a proper, practical conversation about multi-species swards, not the broch...
No Cake, More Milk: Is it Possible with Robots?
If your robot relies on cake to keep cows moving, ask yourself a blunt question: what happens the day the pellet system breaks? That single point of failure is one of the reasons we wanted this conversation, because Kelli Hutchings and Matt Str...
Podcast Live - AI On The Dairy Farm
AI is creeping into dairy whether we call it that or not, and most of the noise you hear is either hype or horror stories. So, we brought the conversation into the room with our first live event at the UK Agri-Tech Centre and asked a more usefu...
How Much Sun Is Too Much?
Sunburn feels like an inconvenience until you connect it to the cancer statistics. Melanoma is the fifth most common cancer in the UK, and Susanna Daniels, CEO of Melanoma Focus, joins us to explain why a “just a mole” mindset is risky, and why...
Great Silage Starts With The Right Clamp Layout
Silage isn’t just a crop, it’s a high value asset, and the clamp you store it in can quietly decide how much of it you actually get to feed. We sit down with Jeremy Perkins from SiloStop Agri to talk through what good silage pit design looks li...
Clover Can Cut Nitrogen Use, Without Cutting Yield
Clover can feel like a gamble until you understand what it’s really doing in the sward and how small management choices decide the outcome. We’re joined by John Spence, Forage Crops Product Manager at Limagrain, to get clear on the practical di...
European Dairy Farmers Congress 2026
Numbers make people uncomfortable for a reason: they tell the truth. We’re joined by the EDF UK team to unpack European Dairy Farmers and the EDF Congress heading to Chester on 23 to 25 June, including what it is, who it’s for, and why cost of ...
Bokashi Basics; For Better Manure Management
What if your muck heap could hold onto its nitrogen, keep its carbon, and feed soil life the moment it hits the ground? We sit down with Andrew Sincock of Agriton to demystify Bokashi—an anaerobic, lactic-led fermentation of farmyard manure tha...
Circular Farming: Better Food, Healthier Planet
Forget the headline battles over “cow versus climate.” We dig into how livestock, managed within a circular bioeconomy, can actually reduce risk, recover nutrients, and improve the food we eat. With Professor Michael Lee of Harper Adams Univers...
Transition Milk; Leads to Stronger Calves
What if the biggest gains in calf health happen after the first feed? We explore the overlooked power of transition milk — the nutrient- and antibody-rich milkings from days two to four — and how feeding it for 10 days can tilt the odds toward ...
Cows Choose Breakfast, Robots Do The Dishes
Fresh grass, quiet robots, and cows that choose their own breakfast. That’s the unexpected picture that emerges when grazing meets automation on modern UK dairy farms. We sit down with Matthew Senior, Farmer & Robot Grazing Consultant and G...
Employing is Easy; Keeping People Isn’t!
New year, fresh start, better teams. We sit down with Becky Miles from Real Success to map out how UK dairy farms can turn a good hire into a long-term teammate. Not with grand gestures, but with the basics done well: a thoughtful first day, ho...
The Walk to the Land of the Long White Cloud
What really makes a cow go lame, and why did it take so long to change our minds? We sit down with Professor Jon Huxley—raised on a Welsh dairy, now leading Massey University’s vet school in New Zealand—for a candid tour through research that r...
AI, Satellites, and Smarter Grazing Decisions
Planning grazing by guesswork is costly; planning it with field‑level satellite insight is a game‑changer. We sit down with Chris Knight of Agribot to unpack how AI, radar, and atmosphere forecasting can measure pasture growth, cut labour, and ...
Succession, Wills, And Keeping The Farm Running
A farm doesn’t pause for grief, and that’s exactly why a clear succession plan matters. We sit down with Old Mill partners Willem Puddy and Philip Kirkpatrick to unpack the human, legal, and financial knots around passing on a family farm—witho...
Reading Cows: Signals That Boost Welfare And Yield
Ever wish you could read a shed like a story? We walk through CowSignals® with vet consultant Owen Atkinson and coach-trainer Jo Speed, showing how behaviour becomes your best advisory tool. From the CowSignals® Diamond (feed, water, light, air...
Cow Recovery, Done Right
A down cow should never mean panic. We sit down with Dorset tenant farmer James Yeatman and Synergy Farm Health’s research lead, vet Rachel Hayton, to unpack a farmer-built “cow ambulance” that turns a stressful emergency into a calm, repeatabl...
Farming & First Aid: Help Save a Life!
A hard truth: UK farming employs a tiny slice of the workforce yet carries a heavy share of workplace deaths. We don’t say that to point fingers—we say it to spark action. This conversation gets practical about first aid on farms: what the law ...
The GB Calf Strategy: Past Progress, Future Vision
Discover how the GB Calf Strategy is transforming British farming by creating purposeful connections between dairy and beef sectors. Join AHDB experts Sarah Tomlinson, Laura Awdry, and Harriet Bunning as they reveal the remarkable progress alre...
Beyond Breeding: The Epigenetic Revolution
What if your cows could tell you exactly what they need to thrive? That's the groundbreaking promise of epigenetics, where the frontier of dairy science meets practical farm management. In this fascinating deep dive, Ian Garner, He...
Forgotten Heifers: The Lost Months
What happens to your dairy heifers between weaning and calving? This question reveals a critical blind spot on many UK dairy farms. While we meticulously monitor pre-weaning calves and track age at first calving, those crucial months in between...
Amino Acids: The Hidden Heroes of Heifer Health
Amino acids may be the most underrated nutritional tool for transforming heifer development and health on your dairy farm. In this eye-opening episode, Ken March takes us through his remarkable journey from East London to becoming a dairy nutri...
The Transition Period: Setting Cows Up for Success
The transition period is the highest-risk window in a dairy cow's life, with far-reaching consequences for health, productivity, and farm profitability. In this comprehensive episode, we speak with Donald Lawson, head of the ruminant team at Pr...
Are Genomics Working?
What does the UK's third-highest PLI Holstein herd discover when they test every calf born on their farm? Stuart and Helen Rogers of Longmoor Farm reveal how genomic testing transformed not just their breeding decisions, but their entire approa...