The Farm Profit Programme is an ambitious new project delivered by the Farmers Journal and ANM Group with the support of the Scottish Government. The objective of the programme is to improve the technical performance and profitability of livestock farms across the north and northeast of Scotland. Read more

I am Andrew and I farm alongside my wife Debbie and our three sons Sam, Ben and Max near Tomintoul in the Cairngorm National Park.

Max works full-time on the farm, with Sam and Ben helping at weekends and during busy periods. We are tenants of the Crown Estate on two units, Mains of Auchriachan, the home farm, and Glenconglas, just four miles away.

They are hill farms, with the home farm sitting at 370 metres above sea level. The land rises to nearly 675 metres at the summit.

We have a limited area of in-bye land that is Class 4.1 and this runs through to the worst of the hill at Class 7. We also rent a small area of land 24 miles away to grow barley to give us grain for feeding and straw for bedding.

Our cows calve in two similar sized groups, spring (March/April) and autumn (September/October).

Cows are mainly Simmental-cross and we run three bulls – a Simmental to breed replacements, a Limousin for the heifers and a Charolais to produce store cattle at around the yearling stage.

Our ewes are run on the traditional Scottish stratified system, with the 400 hill Blackface flock producing mules for our 230-ewe in-bye flock.

Soil fertility will be our main focus as will pushing our in-bye grazing harder and this should allow us to increase stock numbers on our more productive land. We are also considering putting some cows back up on to the hill ground, as we feel they will complement the sheep well on this land. For sheep, we are aiming to get our lambs weaned earlier, making better use of the grass and get the ewes back in to good condition for tupping.