Calf Housing for Health and Welfare 2023

What is the grant available for?

You can apply for a Calf Housing for Health and Welfare grant to build new, upgrade, or replace existing calf housing buildings to deliver health and welfare benefits for your calves.

For the purposes of this grant, the term ‘calf’ refers to domestic cattle up to 6 months old.

Grant funded calf housing must provide a good ambient environment and facilitate social contact through pair or group housing. A good ambient environment must ensure good air quality, temperature, and humidity within the building through choice of suitable location, ventilation, and other building features.

A successful project will:

• improve calf health and welfare
• enhance environmental sustainability
• introduce innovation

If your project meets all these priorities, it’s more likely to be accepted.

The grant can pay for capital costs to build new, or upgrade existing, calf housing buildings such as:

• A-frame buildings with 4 walls
• mono-pitch buildings with 3 walls and one open side
• permanent open-sided structures with igloos or hutches
• other types of building that do not fit the above categories

The buildings must be a permanent non-movable building, securely attached to a foundation, intended for use for a minimum of 5 years.

All projects must meet the legal requirements for calf housing. This grant offers funding to help farmers deliver higher standards for health and welfare and is not intended to help meet the minimum standards.

Any eligibility criteria

You can apply for a grant if you’re an existing cattle farmer in England carrying out farming activity, including calf rearing, with 11 or more cattle. Any buildings you build or upgrade with money from the grant must be located in England.

You must either own the land you’re building on, or have a tenancy agreement for the land until 5 years after the project is complete. You can apply if your current agreement will end sooner than 5 years after the project, if you expect it to continue.

Any monies from the Calf Housing for Health and Welfare grant must not be used to cross-subsidise any related, linked, parent, subsidiary, partnership, joint venture businesses or operations based in Northern Ireland. Funds from this grant must be used solely for the purposes of England business operations only.

What grant amounts are available?

The minimum grant you can apply for is £15,000 (40% of £37,500). The maximum grant is £500,000 per applicant business. The minimum grant amount does not include costs associated with rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) panels.

Grants can cover up to a maximum rate of 40% of the eligible costs of a project. If you’re including rooftop solar PV panels as part of your project, we will only fund the purchase and installation of these up to 25% of the eligible costs.

You need to be able to pay the remaining project costs. You can use loans, overdrafts, and certain other monies, such as money received through the Basic Payment Scheme or agri-environment schemes such as the Countryside Stewardship scheme.

 

Who provides the grant?

Farming Transformation Fund

How to apply for the grant?

Read the how to apply guidance for full information on how to apply. For more information please click here.