Westons Rose Veal
Westons Farm, Kersdown Barton, Bampton, Devon, EX16 9DU
Produce: Pedigree Jersey Rose Veal
Neil Weston of Kersdown Barton Farm keeps a dairy herd of Pedigree Jersey cows, the farm having been run by the family since 1904. He milks the females and rears the bull calves for rose veal.
The cows are milked once a day and graze outside for most of year on grass and come inside in the winter when the ground becomes too wet. Then they are house on to deep bedded straw and fed a diet of just grass silage. Their female calves producing replacements for the dairy herd and the Bull calves are used for the Rose Veal.
Neil explains, “Our ethos is to try and create a system whereby we rely on grass to feed our animals. As the West Country is a perfect place to grow grass and grass is a natural feed for cows.”
“We rear our Jersey and Guernsey bull calves to produce lean Rose Veal, instead of having them suffer the same fate as many other dairy bull calves by being shot at birth.
The calves are reared outdoors in the summer months groups of 24 from 3 weeks of age then reared indoors during the winter when ground becomes wet in groups of 12 with ample space and bedded on straw. Thus they are Free Range. They are given a balanced diet that contains all the nutrients they need and are fed milk twice a day. This produces rose veal (pink meat), not white veal created purposely by an unbalanced and deficient diet.”
