From the annual benchmarking carried out across all the Focus Farms, it is clear to see that the winter period poses the biggest threat to on-farm profitability. With this in mind, each of the farms has started to assess how winter feed and bedding costs can be reduced.

As a result, the Duguids at Cranna have put a number of changes in place this winter to address this issue. The farm will open its doors to the public for a farm walk on Monday 3 December at 11am, with the theme of the day ‘Attacking the cost of winter’.

Out-wintering

Eighteen acres of hybrid brassica crop Swift has been grown this year. Neeps are grown every year on the farm and originally, the Swift was sown to make up for what looked like it could be a poor crop of neeps. However, since the Swift was sown, the neeps have powered on as well, leaving the farm with an excellent crop of both.

Currently the last of this year’s lambs are grazing the swift by day and on an adjoining grass park by night. There are only around 70 lambs left at this stage with another draw to be taken in the coming days.

The lambs took a few days and a bit of patience to get used to the crop. They are being strip grazed with four strands of temporary electric fencing. Getting sufficient power in the fence is critical as well as making sure you have enough posts in, at every 7-8 yards.

They are maintaining power in the fence by driving the tractor along the next break line to tramp down the crop and prevent the fence from earthing. This then gives them two shifts of the wire in each tramline. Since they have gotten used to it, they have settled and are cleaning out the crop quite well. However, it is clear that the last of the lambs will be gone by Christmas and there will be over three quarters of the crop still to use.

Therefore, it has been decided to turn out a batch of spring calving cows post weaning. Any cow in good condition has now gone back out to graze the crop.

It was debated to just put out enough cows to graze it through until pre-calving but with the fear of losing a proportion or all of the crop in the event of a heavy snowfall, it was decided to put as many cows out as were fit to do so and graze it as quickly as possible.

Scanning

The cows were housed for weaning and drying off about a fortnight ago. This is the earliest the Duguids have had all the cows weaned in a lot of years. Any thin or first-calved heifers had their backs clipped, were dosed and are housed for winter. Those that were in good body condition and going back outside were left unclipped.

On Tuesday, prior to them going back out, the spring-calving herd was pregnancy scanned. As always, it is a nervous day as you hope for a result that will set you up for a successful year next year.

Thankfully of the 72 cows scanned, just three were empty and of 20 heifers coming in, all but one were in calf. That gives us a 95.8% in-calf rate in the cows and 95% in the heifers. Looking back through the calving records at the empty cows, two had retained cleanings post-calving in spring which is more than likely the reason why they didn’t go back in calf. The three cows and heifer will all be sold, a couple of the cows will be fed for a few weeks to put a decent amount of flesh on them prior to sale.

The lambs and cows are grazing the same crop but separately. The cows are using a field that has been earmarked for a forage crop next year as a lieback. In this way, they can accept some poaching to this field around heavily trafficked areas such as gateways. There is a hard stand area at the top of the field where straw is being offered ad lib to the cows.

Autumn herd

There are now just seven autumn cows left to clave. The Duguids started calving at the start of October so we are just nine weeks in at this stage. The calving spread of both herds is something they have been working on over the last couple of years. The benefits of this are numerous but can really be seen come sale day when your weight spread is much tighter and there is little or no hangover of calves that are not fit to be sold with their comrades.

Calving has gone well up to this point but they will wait until the last cow is calved before we get too excited. Breeding will start around 22 December to give us a 1 October calving start next year.

Pneumonia outbreak

There was a pneumonia outbreak in last year’s autumn calves just after housing. They were in one of the older sheds where ventilation is maybe not as good as the newer ones. It was during the changeable weather in early November where the days were very mild and the nights were quite cold. It was detected in good time though and just a dozen had to be treated. They were moved to a shed with more airflow and the problem disappeared. The whole group have really kicked on again since this and are thriving well.

Tupping

The tups are in with the ewes since 5 November, this will see them lambing from 1 April onwards. They had been lambing a fortnight earlier in previous years but delaying lambing has definitely helped with the number of lambs we are now getting to market, and doing so at a younger age than before as well.

This is due to lambs hitting the ground running when lambing that bit later. Days are longer and the chances of better weather are increased. There is more grass around to support ewe milk yield and lambs are never stunted. Better grassland management through the use of paddocks has also helped get lambs away earlier in the year. Not having a large hangover of lambs into the New Year has a massive impact on the following year. Getting the lambs out of the system earlier means we can use the neeps for grazing the ewes and this means the grass parks are rested throughout winter allowing them to come back quicker in spring. It is small changes like this that have a cumulative effect and make a major impact to the overall profitability of the enterprise.