The swedes will be used to graze the ewes during the winter, to take them off grass and give it a chance to rest and, conditions permitting, regrow.

A ewe with twin lambs at foot needs three times the energy as she does when she has no lambs, so making sure there is plenty of feed ahead at lambing time will drive the lactation peak higher. This year’s lambing saw grass being on the tight side on most of the farms, so the ewes’ lactations will not have peaked as high as they could have.

With growing costs of around £500/ha and an estimated dry matter yield of 8t/ha, costs are expected to be around £65/t of dry matter. The swedes will be strip-grazed to maximise utilisation and control ewe intake. Mid-pregnancy, 70kg ewes should only be eating around 0.9kg dry matter of swedes per day, giving a daily cost of 6p/head.

Wedding bells

The last three months have just flown by. Calving started in February, with lambing taking place at the end of the month, through to sowing in April and then the heifer with calf-at-foot sales in May

Wedding bells rang the end of a busy few months at Ardhuncart.

June brought a much-welcomed change from farming, with the marriage of our eldest daughter, Kimberley, to local lad William Mackie.

Back to farming

Our cows start calving just after our main batch of heifers, which are sold in May. The heifers are predominantly home bred, with a handful bought in to boost numbers and give a fresh bloodline when needed for our own replacements.

The heifers are run with a Limousin bull and we had our first batch of calves off the new bull we purchased in May 2016. The herd at Ardhuncart is BVD accredited through Biobest Hi-Health, and all stock is vaccinated from yearlings ’till the remainder of their time on the farm for both BVD and Lepto.

The heifers are calved at between 30-36 months of age, in order to be fit and strong enough to mix with a mature cow herd. Many farmers do calve at two years, but we have found that if you intend to sell these outfits they are not strong enough for the buyers who set the price you get at the sale. We are fortunate that we now have a number of repeat buyers and our consignment averaged over £2,600 per outfit this spring.

We had 31 heifers going to the bull this spring, and have sold 15 and retained 15 for our own replacements – more have been retained than normal to reduce the age of our own herd and try to keep numbers up at the same time. The strong cull cow prices have influenced this decision.

Ewes scanned at 200% this year. The twins and triplets were given a flat rate of 18% Ewe Nuts with Amino Green, the singles were left to nibble just grass. Lambing started at the end of February and was done by the second week in April. It brought it’s fair share of challenges. Prolapses, intestinal prolapses, ring womb, caesarean sections and the M-word: mastitis. This was across all breeds in the flock, not just limited to one in particular. Mastitis has been a headache this year, both before and after lambing. The combined problems have resulted in more ewe deaths than is normally acceptable.

Show season

On a brighter note, we hope to get our first draw of lambs for the forthcoming show and sale at Thainstone. The lambs are fed on grass only and hopefully we will manage to draw prime lambs on a regular basis.

Grass was extremely tight all spring, but with the recent heat it has now started to get ahead of them. The sheep were lightly stocked across the fields, but have now been grouped together. Four hectares have been added to the silage area, as the grass would have been wasted if under-grazed. Silage will be cut early, July weather permitting.

This year, we have sown just over a hectare of swedes to utilise a small field beside the church. The remainder of the field has been sown with a quick-growing grass variety. The swedes will provide winter fodder either for the sheep or the cows, dependant on the growing season.