“Your Machine is Only as Good as Your Backup”

“Your Machine is Only as Good as Your Backup”: Why This Shropshire Dairy Operation Partnered with Battlefield Machinery

For James and his family, running a modern, multi-site agricultural business across Shropshire and Staffordshire is all about efficiency, reliability, and finding machinery partners who truly understand the pressure of day-to-day farming.

Their family-run operation spans two holdings 40 miles apart: a 350-acre beef and arable unit in Lichfield, as well as another farm at Stoke-on-Tern near Market Drayton. Here, they milk 200 Holstein cows on a Fullwood robotic system, rear their own youngstock, and manage 500 acres of cereals, maize, and grassland. With James, his dad, brother, wife, site manager Alex, and two agricultural students keeping the wheels turning across two counties, downtime isn’t just an inconvenience; it halts the entire system.

When they expanded their operation to Stoke-on-Tern, they needed machinery tailored to their daily routines: equipment that could handle heavy forage, fit through low shed clearances, cut down manual labour hours, and, above all, come backed by dependable local support.

Enter Ryan from Battlefield Machinery.

When James was looking to upgrade from an old single-tub mixer that was boiling forage over the top, he wasn’t looking for a pushy sales pitch. He needed a robust diet feeder with a twin-auger setup in a compact body that could handle heavy forage and fit through tight shed openings.

“Ryan dropped in and was very happy to set up a demo,” recalls James. “It wasn’t forced on us; it was very much ‘give it a go, either you like it, or you don’t.’ We had the machine on trial on-farm for nearly a week. Ryan brought out the product specialists from Kverneland, listened to what we needed, and worked out how we could adjust wheel sizes and body heights to fit our exact shed clearances.”

The choice was a Siloking Premium 20m³ twin-auger feeder wagon. Compared to modular alternative brands on the market, the Siloking’s heavy-duty integrated chassis and twin-auger action stood out immediately.

The impact on their daily routine was immediate: it halved their daily feeding time down to just 30 minutes per feed.

“You can drop a full round bale into it, and it chops it without bending, complaining, or making noises. We even mix an 8-ton caustic wheat batch in it every 10 days; people told us you couldn’t do that in a vertical tub feeder, but it handles double what our old mixer did. To be honest, I think we’ll kill the tractor before we kill the feeder.”

Alongside the Siloking feeder, the farm also operates a Kverneland 863 Pro trailed straw bedder/chopper supplied by Ryan. Moving away from a mounted unit allowed them to run a much smaller tractor, saving fuel while easily handling high-density, heavy bales.

“It shreds every bale you put through it; it can certainly handle some stick,” James explains. “You can get two bales in, and even when you get a tough, cardboardy bale, it just takes it. It’s made bedding down faster because you’re not constantly nursing the machine out of fear you’ll break it.”

While having high-spec, well-built kit is essential, James is clear about what truly matters when choosing an equipment dealer.

“I would recommend Battlefield because the service and backup are so good. If you have a breakdown, they get you going. The service team are great; you can just call, and they come out and sort things. Your machine is only as good as your backup. You can have the best machine in the world, but it’s completely useless when it’s parked up broken in the yard.”

In an era where massive multi-depot dealerships can leave farmers feeling like a number on a spreadsheet, the personal, around-the-table relationship with Ryan and the Battlefield team gives James the confidence that his business is fully supported 24/7.