Our agriculture facilities provide a real work environment for training and skills development. Our working farm is set within 126 hectares of Hampshire countryside, as well as a further 134 hectares at another site. There are a number of farm units that operate on a commercial basis and students undertake regular farm duties as part of their course.
The Agriculture facilities are also a key resource for research and dissertation projects on-site for our higher education students studying Agriculture at University Centre Sparsholt. Find out more about our undergraduate courses here.
Take a look at the key agriculture facilities that make up the College Farm:
Beef & Youngstock Unit
The primary goal of the Beef Unit is to maximise the value of calves born to dairy cows. To support this, we have recently invested in a brand-new beef barn, which includes a built-in fixed handling unit and crush, enhancing our facilities and capabilities.
Beef animals of all ages are used to teach cattle handling to students who require it. The calves born are either pure Holstein heifers, raised to reach at least 350kg at service and 500kg at calving or Holstein males and crossbred calves of both sexes.
As an autumn-calving herd, older calves are fattened for market at 16-18 months of age, while later-born calves are reared as stores and sold to local cattle finishers in spring. Additionally, a small suckler herd, established in 2017 from homebred stock, continues to be an integral part of our operation.
Garston’s Dairy Unit
In the ever-evolving world of dairy farming, producers must continuously adapt to remain sustainable. The College faces the same commercial pressures as the wider industry, including fluctuating milk prices and rising input costs.
To secure the future of milk production at the college and maintain the unit as a leading teaching facility, we adapted the herd and transitioned to autumn calving to better align with teaching schedules and term time.
Significant investments have been made to enhance our facilities, including a state-of-the-art DeLaval robotic parlour, a brand-new traditional conventional parlour, and a new dairy barn, ensuring students gain experience with the latest advancements in dairy technology and animal husbandry. Additionally, the new AgriTech Centre provides a cutting-edge learning environment, featuring two laboratories, modern classrooms, and an extensive variety of livestock husbandry simulators.
Although smaller than the average herd, Sparsholt’s Holstein cows consistently rank highly in the Kite Consulting Twice per Day League Table for Southern England.
We are also proud to have our own Sparsholt College show team, ‘Sparsholt Holsteins,’ which offers students the opportunity to demonstrate their showing skills at agricultural events throughout the summer. The team competes at local country shows such as the Royal Bath and West Show and the Ellingham and Ringwood Agricultural Society Show, where we are regularly placed highly.
The College takes great pride in its purpose-built pig unit, designed to uphold the highest standards of animal health and welfare. As a member of RSPCA Freedom Food and Farm Assured British Pigs, the unit undergoes regular veterinary monitoring to ensure compliance with rigorous welfare protocols. Every aspect of the facility has been carefully planned to provide the pigs with maximum comfort and freedom, while still operating within a commercial setting.
Recently, we partnered with The Royal Veterinary College to create 360-degree footage of our pig unit. This innovative resource will be used for a variety of educational purposes, including teaching Jordanian Veterinary School student’s essential husbandry techniques.
Our pigs are housed in social groups whenever possible and kept on straw bedding to promote natural behaviours. Piglets have access to a dedicated sleeping area with a heat lamp to ensure their comfort and well-being.
At 28 days old, piglets are weaned from the sow and moved into the weaner house, where they are fed ad lib via an automated feeding system. Their diet progresses through two specialized feed types during their time in this stage.
Once pigs reach 40kg, they transition to the finishing house, where they remain until they reach 100kg. They continue on an ad lib feeding system, and their pens are cleaned regularly to maintain optimal hygiene and welfare standards.
The Sheep Unit plays a key role in providing education and training, promoting best practices in husbandry and management, and contributing to the farm’s profitability. The College flock consists of 320 breeding ewes.
We lamb over January/February, giving students the opportunity to gain hands-on lambing experience during term time. This early lambing schedule ensures students develop essential skills before the main lambing season, allowing them to apply their knowledge on external farms during the Easter holidays and work experience weeks.
By lambing in January, the College maximises learning opportunities, enabling students to refine their skills in a structured environment before gaining further real-world experience in the commercial sector.
Additionally, around 20 animals are retained into the autumn months for student training and to help manage the College’s grazing areas, efficiently utilising excess grass growth.
We also offer a wide range of short courses for external applicants, including a two-day shearing course, a lambing day experience, and livestock transport training. These courses provide valuable additional skills and can be completed on request by students looking to further enhance their practical knowledge and employability in the industry.
The College boasts an extensive and diverse range of equipment, providing students with invaluable hands-on experience in modern farming techniques. Our fleet includes plot tractors from renowned brands such as John Deere, Valtra, Massey Ferguson, and Ford, as well as a fleet of larger farm tractors like the Case Puma and John Deere, ensuring students learn to operate some of the best machinery in the industry.
We also have three telehandlers, quad bikes, and buggies (ATVs and RTVs), offering students a variety of vehicles to master. In addition, we are well-equipped with a selection of smaller tractors and sprayers for specialized short courses, including PA1, PA2, and PA6. These courses enable students to gain essential certifications and practical skills required in modern agricultural operations.
The College further enhances its training opportunities with a wide variety of trailers, muck spreaders, ploughs, and cultivation equipment, giving students the opportunity to learn how to drive and operate various machinery used in everyday farming tasks.
We also offer short courses such as the Certificate of Competence in Tractor Operation, Safe Use of ATV, and Certificate of Competence in Forklift Truck Operations, providing students with essential certifications for their future careers.
We are also excited to soon open a brand-new tractor simulation room, which will feature four high-spec tractor simulators, with specialized software for tractor, forklift, and combine harvester training, ensuring students gain comprehensive knowledge and experience in agricultural machinery.
Soils with similar characteristics and derived from similar parent materials are grouped together as a soil series. Four main soil series have been identified at Sparsholt. These are Andover Series, Wallop Series, Winchester Series and Charity Series.
Andover Series
The profile is essentially shallow, brown, flinty loam over chalk and typically it is associated with sloping ground. Usually, it is under arable cultivation with a considerable local variation in soil depth.
Wallop Series
Shallow layer of clay-with-flints overlaying chalk. It occurs typically on convex slopes at the edge of the Winchester Series and also in isolated patches on elevated land surrounded by Andover Series.
Winchester Series
The profile shows brown flinty clay loam to clay, over flinty clay ranging from reddish brown to yellowish brown which will indicate drainage characteristics of the series.
Charity Series
Colluvial material derived from the chalk and clay flints resting on disturbed chalk or brown flinty clay mixed with chalk.
Sparsholt College has a cropping profile which provides for the needs of the livestock enterprises. Further land off-site provides additional forage supplies, arable cropping for income generation and enhanced fieldwork opportunities for students. Crops include two-year grass leys for growing bulk hay and haylage crops, forage maize, lucerne and forage rye.
Maize
Maize planting commences towards the end of April on land which has received farmyard manure application from the College dairy unit. Growing maize also creates field work opportunities for students such as muck spreading, ploughing, cultivation and drilling.
Grassland
The College Farm has a far higher percentage of grassland than would be normal for this area of Hampshire. This is due to the number and variety of livestock enterprises required to support the students in their learning. The grassland can be classified into three broad types: long term, short term and permanent pasture.
Lucerne
Lucerne is grown to provide quality forage for feeding to our dairy herd. Lucerne is high in protein (18-22%), drought tolerant and is cheap to grow. It requires no nitrogen fertiliser and only needs seeding once every 4 years.
OFF-SITE FIELD CROPPING ON OUR ADDITIONAL LAND
Little Buckholt Farm
This 20-hectare farm is approximately 13 miles from the College and is owned by a member of the College staff.
Farming Land at Winterslow
Roughly 100 hectares of arable land at Winterslow, near Sailsbury. The need for extra fieldwork opportunities had been identified and this block of land allows us to provide extra field scale tractor driving, as well as generating data for students to use.
Christmas Hill Farm
Approx. 25 hectares of grazing land to expand resources to assist teaching for the new T level Crop qualifications.
SCHEMES AND STEWARDSHIP
Both our Sparsholt campus and the land at Winterslow are part of the Higher-Level Scheme (HLS). To meet HLS requirements and upcoming changes to the Single Farm Payment, approximately 7% of the farmable area must be dedicated to conservation. To achieve this, we’ve made strategic decisions, including removing difficult-to-farm field corners from cropping and planting them with vegetation designed to support bird and insect populations.
Some of the key actions taken to meet the scheme’s entry-level requirements include:
To further enhance the farm and meet Higher Level Scheme requirements, the following additional options are being considered:
These efforts work together to improve biodiversity, support wildlife, and encourage sustainable farming practices on our land. They also provide students in most land-based courses the opportunity to actively engage in the development and management of conservation and land stewardship.
Active participation in routine livestock duties
Experience is gained in the commercial functions associated with care and management of livestock units. Students are supervised by well-trained, experienced farm staff. As well as the basic husbandry the students are able to build on a whole range of useful skills including time-keeping, motivation, diligence and attention to detail.
Livestock and fieldwork demonstrations under the supervision of staff
Aspects of animal welfare, routine veterinary tasks, weighing of stock and the use farm machinery form the basics of linking practice with theory. The pig unit, calf rearing unit and sheep flock provide valuable opportunities for hands-on experience with the support of staff. The livestock units support programmes of practical instruction for animal management courses, as well as the agriculture courses.
Practical facilities linked to environmental management, countryside skills and woodland management
The estate provides the opportunity to demonstrate conservation and management practice whilst providing hands-on practice and an abundance of investigative assignment opportunities.
Data and information for lessons and assignments
Farming, managing the countryside and recording the information generated gives rise to invaluable material for both staff and students. The College Farm operates an open book approach to all aspects of its commercial farming, providing a wealth of invaluable live data for both staff and students.