Only 10 years since making the leap from managing someone else's farm to running his own, all the main ingredients of an authentic Cornish pasty can be found under Jeremy Oatey's stewardship at Agricola Growers, West Antony Farm near Torpoint, in the south east corner of that county.

Back in 2004, he got started farming in his own right by winning a 120 hectare (300ac) contract farming deal. Only nine years later, he took the prestigious Arable Farmer of the Year title in the Farmers Weekly Awards.

Today, Mr Oatey's business covers more than 1,000 hectares under a number of contract farming agreements and farm business tenancies. In addition to wheat, he grows potatoes and onions for supply with bought in swedes, all peeled and washed, to local pasty makers, and finishes 80 Angus-cross cattle each year.

The beef enterprise came about in 2007 when Agricola took over a farm with cattle housing in good working condition. Wary of the high risks involved in rearing infant calves, Mr Oatey opted instead for buying reared calves from a beef finishing 'franchise' business at three to four months of age and at least 100kg live-weight, and selling finished animals back at 550 to 600kg live-weight (280 to 300kg carcase). By taking a sale contract at the outset, a minimum margin between the buying and selling prices can be locked in, says Mr Oatey.

In the first three months of life, explains Zoetis vet Carolyn Hogan, one of the main disease threats shouldered by the calf rearer for all buyers is pneumonia. "The risk is minimised by fully trained, highly skilled and well motivated rearers working with a proven set of operating procedures and rewarded for achieving clear performance targets," she says.

Calves sourced from dairy farms at up to three weeks of age are given a single-shot Rispoval® IntraNasal pneumonia vaccine against the two main viruses associated with infant calf respiratory disease, RSV and PI3, on arrival at the franchisor company's contract rearing units. Housing is designed to provide a dry, well ventilated and draught-free living space for calves. As they approach readiness for moving to finishers like Jeremy Oatey, the two-dose Rispoval® 4 intramuscular vaccine is given for a further six months of protection against RSV and PI3, plus two other commonplace viral disease threats, IBR and BVD.

A new batch of reared calves arrives at the Agricola unit each autumn. On a winter diet of grass silage, wholecrop peas and barley, stockfeed potatoes and a compound pellet, growth rates are in the range 1.0 to 1.2kg a day. During the April to October grazing season, they ease slightly to 0.8 to 1.0.

To ensure growth rates stay on target to finish at 20-21 months of age, cattle are weighed every month then feeding adjusted if necessary, and the housing's ventilation has been checked using smoke bombs to show clean air entering where it should and leaving through the roof ridge.

From this and other evidence, it is clear that the attention to detail resulting in the Farmers Weekly award is applied just as rigorously to the Agricola Farms' beef finishing unit.