The Duffus family recently held a farm walk at their farm in the Cairngorms to discuss the results from the first 18 months of the Farm Profit Programme. Robert Gilchrist catches up with them to see how things are going and how the farm walk was

In any other season, the meeting would have been timed just right. This year, with things being early, Sam and Ben were cutting our barley the night before the meeting. It looks to have done quite well for us, with just over 5t/ha.

We have quickly gone into the stubbles and cultivated them and sown 2.5ha of stubble turnips. It is getting late enough in the season but an extra 2t DM/ha will really help to shorten the winter.

Fodder

We are still very short on rainfall and grass growth has been pretty disappointing across the summer. The second cut at Glenconglass was finally ready for cutting in the last week of August and we got 186 bales from the 11ha, a bit short of where we would have liked to be. However, we are sitting in not too bad a position feed-wise, so should be okay for winter. As fodder is tight, we decided against purchasing any stores to winter this year. We have the extra 18 heifers for the hill to carry through winter and would rather make a good job of them to give them the best possible start next spring.

Winter housing

The current plan is to winter them on a sheltered area on the hill on silage bales in rings. This will mean that they will have no need for bedding for most of winter and will only be housed to calve. This will get them prepared for what they will have to face for the next few years out on the hill.

They are in good order and have been served to a Shorthorn bull. The idea with the Shorthorn is to give us a heifer calf that can either join its mother on the hill or can join the main suckler herd. The steers will be sold as stores. They were discussed a lot at the meeting, although they were a bit shy and didn’t come down to see their guests.

We plan to increase their numbers over the next few years as they will really help to improve the hill. This will be both for them and for the ewes.

Sheep

However, we are taking a hard look at the ewes and what we can do with them as it’s looking like we have had an expensive year with them. Keeping them in condition over winter took up a lot of feed, with them starting on silage in the first days of December and not coming off feed until well through April. This wouldn’t be so bad if we could get the lamb output from them but between the embryonic loss through winter pulling scanning down to just short of 130% and a large number of lambs missing from the hill, there will not be a lot of margin from them this year.

That being said, the lambs that have come in from the hill have done exceptionally well and we will have nearly 200 to go off fat this year. This is a significant rise on the last couple of years, with last year being 80 and the year before being 50. Having ewes in better condition throughout the year is really paying dividends for us and with 120 more lambs fat than last year and a £30/lamb increase over store price, this will help to offset the lamb losses from the hill.

Infrastructure

We took a drive through the lambs during the meeting and we are pleased with their performance. From there we moved in to the new lambing shed. This is the shed that we built ourselves for around £5,000 all in. It was not necessary this year as by the time that we were lambing, the weather was on our side but it is there for future years. At the same time, it was handy for us to keep some of the cows in as our landlords were busy replacing the shed that they would normally be in over winter. Whilst not needed for lambing, Debbie still used it for the mules and it really simplified management, as instead of having to go and gather a batch of ewes and lambs from the lambing parks to transport them off to grazing, we generally took them straight from the shed, saving a lot of time over the busy period.

While we were in the shed, we did some condition scoring of ewes to demonstrate how simple it is to do. A short race full of eight ewes were scored in a matter of seconds, showing how quick and easy it is to get a handle on where the sheep are at. The blackies really surprised a few folks as although visually, they looked thinner, once you got your hands on them, they were actually some of the fitter ewes in the race.

Future

Going forward, we aim to continue to get the lambs off the ewes that month earlier than we used to. While last winter was difficult, having the ewes in good condition going in to the bad weather really set us up and I shudder to think where the scanning percentage would have been had we not built ewe condition up pre-tupping.

After lunch, Steven Sandison, Nuffield Scholar from Orkney gave a presentation on his Nuffield report. The other Focus Farmers and I had seen Steven previously, but it was an opportunity to bring him in to speak to a wider audience. His topic was “Are benchmarking targets for suckler cows achievable in island areas?” and at its heart was challenging the optimum target of a herd rearing 92 calves per 100 cows put to the bull. Interestingly, Steven is now doing it and we have seen some of his conclusions play out here at Auchriachan. Looking towards winter, our store lambs are now away and the ewe lambs will hopefully be going off to graze. This leaves us with the rest of the fat lambs, that we hope are away by the end of this month and the ewes. The ewes are going to go back to the hill pre-tupping as they are in relatively good order and the fat lambs are grazing on rotation across the silage fields at home.

Cattle wise, the autumn calvers will be coming home to go on to the rough ground close to the yard as they start calving in three weeks. Their calves are grazing some of the silage aftermaths at Glenconglass and we will put as many kilos on to them between now and the end of October, before selling them as store. The spring cows are finished with the bulls and are grazing in their batches still. We aim to get the calves weaned from them late October/early November to give their mothers a chance to carry some condition in to winter. The calves will be housed at that stage and the cows will graze on until conditions prevent them from doing so.

And finally, we have progress with our glamping pods. Initially, we had planned for them to be established and running this season. However, delays with planning and then building the pods has meant that they have only recently been delivered. We have decided to spend the winter setting things up and come the spring will open to the public. It will give us another revenue stream and perhaps insulate us a little from the changes coming down the line.