From Field to Fashion – Data Matters!

Andy Rumming, Farmer & Butcher, Waterhay Farm, Wiltshire

The Rummings have been farming cattle in a wet part of North Wiltshire for many years. Various generations have run dairy herds, been cattle dealers, had suckler herds and been involved with pedigree and hybrid genetics. Currently we have 85 crossbred suckler cows using Stabilizer and Angus genetics and are operating a vertically integrated niche business.

In order for a business of this scale not just to survive but to really thrive we had to do something different and move on from just selling store cattle at market. The real push for change was being caught up in TB and being severely restricted on how and when we could trade.

I realised that we were already 100% grass fed, had a great story to tell, so wanted to join the dots all the way to the consumer. We started off by direct marketing some beef and running a small beef box scheme where customers visited the farm to collect. This made us less dependent on the livestock market, and we realised we had a good product and people want to buy it based on the quality and our story centred around biodiversity creation. We slowly increased numbers processed, bought the butchery in house, and became Pasture for Life certified. I rapidly realised as we were Pasture for Life certified if people bought meat based on the certification, would they buy leather?

At this point in 2015, the hides were worth £85 each to the abattoir, and that is what I would have to pay the abattoir to take the hide and do something with it. This was a significant cost even before tanning and finishing costs. However, this all changed when an anthrax outbreak in Wiltshire effectively made the hides worthless overnight due to export restrictions in the local area. This was an opportunity to get my hide back for nothing and get them tanned into high-quality leather. Since this point we have built a new butchery added value to as much as we can and they’ll sell range of tallow Bone products offer related products as well as the normal carcass Meat. On the leather side we sell handmade belts, but our biggest product is selling sneakers (trainers) making experiences. Customers come to the farm to make a pair in a day, out of our own leather. The hides that we don’t need ourselves all go into a sustainable leather supply chain which I helped set up with British Pasture Leather back in 2020. These end up in the fashion industry with a story attached to them. Fingers crossed in 2026 we should see the first major name high end bag manufacturer launch a handbag made with this leather.

In terms of data, we have lots of potential data points from an animal all the way from birth to finished shoe. That’s almost too much data. A key machine for us is the weigher labeller in the butchery. Every piece of meat, every bone, goes across this machine and it records the weight, what type it is and it knows what animal it has come from. From this we can generate really detailed animal by animal data on how many kilos of each cut and product. For an O+4L 330kg carcass processed recently the total butchery products was £3,431.

Interestingly the offal was £164 – there is such a huge interest in offal at the moment, for example mince enriched with liver. We’re selling a lot of bones and so there’s easily £80 worth of bones in a carcass. We do five different bone products (no broth). Tallow is also a big seller with £90 worth of jars per carcass. All these things add up. I am now using AI (MS copilot) to summarise my butchery and customer data. This easily shows me what are the key products, who are the key customers, and that shows that 80% of my beef is bought by 20% of my customers. Keeping those 20% really happy is really important.

On the leather side of the business time is a very big metric, so trying to make the leather production efficient is crucial, at present I’m building a workshop which will store the leather correctly and make belt production a bit simpler and room for additional staff to work. The biggest issue on the leather side is that the tanning capacity of Britain is dwindling so we’re looking to supplement this by using a tannery in Germany. I’ve become an exporter of EU byproducts and another project for this year is to build an EU certified high store so this can get underway.

We are also looking at thickness, and blemishes on the leather and will be able to link that back to the individual animal. The finisher that I used for the first batch of hides categorised all the tanned leather we took to him as rejects because of scratches and marks on the hide. We don’t want to sand off the top of the leather and remove all marks and the life of the animal – but customers are used to perfect leather.

So, let’s bring this back to cows – what is the perfect cow when you’re selling beef, tallow, bones, belts and trainers? Well, it’s not really a surprise, it’s probably a 340kg R4L carcass from an animal between 18 and 30 months. Whilst the beef, offal and leather is fun and has a large profit potential, its actually herd performance that is key. If we get that wrong all the money we make extra on the adding value side, we kind of lose on the living animal side. I think that breeding is crucial to get the animal performance for our system.

Quality bulls from our trusted supplier are a keystone foundation. I would also say that providence is so important, because people are buying my meat and leather based on that story and so that farming system, the biodiversity and the animal’s diet is not to be underestimated. Having this providence opens up whole different markets. And then there is the action – do try something different a cow can deliver so many products so think outside the box and explore the bovine potential.