About Us
About Us
Grazing Management
Grazing Management was set up by Alex and Emily Crawley in 2018. What started as an award-winning idea has since expanded into a business with an ever-growing flock and herd. We have built significant experience of working on a wide range of sites and still get excited about the emergence of wildflowers from areas which were once deserts of bracken. We were proud winners in our category at the prestigious British Farming Awards in 2023.
Alex Crawley BA, Gd Dip Ag, Pg Dip
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Alex was a Clyde-Higgs scholar at the Royal Agricultural University, graduating in 2018 as the Hay garth medal winner with a distinction. He won the University’s Enterprise ‘Launch It’ award and went on to win the National Pinnacle Award for entrepreneurship in farming in 2019. Alex has worked on a mix of beef, sheep, dairy and conservation grazing focused farms across the South West, and brings other skills from military planning to diplomacy from previous careers.
Our team and partnerships
Our core team is make up of four agricultural and ecological professionals, with additional support from a number of freelancers, contractors and experts to deliver our services. This gives us the flexibility to support sites across a wide geographical area.
We are proud to be working in partnership with the Wye Valley National Landscape, Natural Resources Wales and Severn Trent, as well as many other landowners, to improve a wide range of habitats from heathland to peatbogs.
Emily Crawley BSc, MSc
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Emily has nearly two decades of experience in environmental management and education. She holds an MSc in Environmental Decision Making, and is passionate about connecting people with nature. She has worked for environmental consultancies, think tanks, and charities focused on food, farming and environmental education, managing large and complex multi-stakeholder projects and partnerships with landowners, statutory bodies, charities and community groups.
Our Approach
Cattle are keystone ecosystem engineers, and have co-evolved with the natural landscape here in the UK over millions of years. Our mix of open grasslands, scrublands and woodlands was historically kept in balance by large grazing animals. As such their unique grazing patterns, trampling and dunging create a host of environments for invertebrates, small mammals, birds and wildflowers. It’s both very difficult and expensive to recreate this holistic approach through other means.
We work with landowners and land managers to bring grazing back into spaces where this balance has been lost, with a resulting decline in biodiversity. Our focus is on ecological outcomes with grazing as a service. This is what makes us different; we aren’t primarily focussed on meat production, our priorities are animal welfare and the habitat restoration aims of the land manager.
Due to the high public access nature of the sites we graze we have developed policies taken from best practice across the conservation grazing sector ensuring we go above and beyond statutory legislation and health and safety guidance:
- We do not use breeding animals, so no bulls, no cows with calves. We use predominantly traditional breeds, or other breeds noted for a more docile temperament.
- Our animals go through a ‘training and selection’ process based on age and experience on public access sites of various levels meaning we match appropriate cattle to sites.
- We have £10m of public liability insurance to cover all our grazing sites.
- We spend time with the animals with dogs and video evidence their reactions.
- Cattle and goats are all bucket trained and NoFence collar trained.
- We provide a 24/7 emergency call out service with responsibility for all TB and welfare issues.
- We avoid the use of ivermectins wherever possible – live dung is a key part of the ecosystem.
- Where possible we aim to engage local community volunteers to ensure genuine local buy in for projects.