There is quite a bit of doom and gloom surrounding beef farming at the moment. Higher input costs, difficult trading prices, climate change and Brexit are all causes for concern for beef producers. However, members of the Farm Profit Programme are bucking the trend, as they plan to increase cow numbers in the coming years.

The Mackay family

Greenvale Farm, Dunnet, Thurso, Caithness

The farm here extends to 368ha, of which the majority is grassland. We grow around 16ha of spring barley for feed.

This year we calved just over 150 cows, split between a spring and summer herd. The summer-calving cows are outwintered on a sandy hill, while the spring cows are housed for the winter.

Environment

We are confident that we are farming with nature here at Greenvale. We have many environmental measures in place on-farm, including wader and wildlife mown grassland – which means we delay silage cutting to allow ground nesting birds, such as waders and lapwings, time to rear their young.

We also have a Site of Specific Scientific Interest (SSSI) on-farm that we manage carefully throughout the year.

The cattle play a pivotal role in this, as they graze the ground at certain times of the year to rejuvenate the plant species. Their dung also attracts insects that help to pollinate the wild flowers.

Cow numbers

We have decided to increase cow numbers on the farm this year for a few reasons.

Firstly, we are now growing more grass than we need due to the increase in productivity of the ground, as we correct pH levels and start to reseed ground that had been quite unproductive over the last number of years.

We have a very good gross margin/cow here, so we know that we can make money from more cows. Our biggest problem is that the stocking rate of the farm is lower than it should be.

We need to increase our output/hectare.

In the past we have just calved heifers to join the spring herd. The summer herd numbers were maintained with any late-calving spring cow that would slip into the summer herd.

Since the start of the programme this has stopped and so in order to maintain numbers we needed to start introducing heifers to the summer-calving herd.

Luckily, we had the females on-farm to do so. In spring we made the decision to hold more young stock for grazing through the summer.

Given the way the beef trade has been all summer, we decided to select be best heifers for breeding.

Most of the retained heifers for grazing were from the summer herd and sired by either Aberdeen Angus or Simmental.

We brought them in for weighing to make sure they were fit for bulling and were amazed that of the 30 plus heifers we selected, the lightest was 460kg.

They are now running with a Shorthorn bull for six weeks. We only want to breed from the most fertile cows, so if they are not in-calf at that stage they will be sold.

All the farms are focusing on maximising the proportion of grazed forage in the diet.

The Biffen family

Arnage Farms, Ellon, Aberdeenshire

We are farming 227ha, of which around 100ha is arable ground and the rest is grassland. We started the project with 130 cows and 200 ewes. In the first two years we have been concentrating on tightening the calving spread. It was quite protracted and so is taking some time to get to less than 12 weeks, but we have a plan in place to do so.

This has led to a higher-than-normal cull rate over the last two years, but now that we have a more productive herd of cows on-farm, we are looking to increase numbers over the coming years.

We have a batch of 24 homebred heifers mated this year to join the spring herd. Hopefully the majority of these will be in-calf.

Margin per hectare

The reason for us increasing cow numbers is because if you sit down and cost it out, there is not much return in growing cereals.

Clearly we will always need to grow enough barley for feed and bedding, but over and above this is questionable. The land is our primary resource.

We need to make the most of every hectare on the farm. That is why farmers need to look at their margin/ha and not on a per head, or per tonne basis.

Outwintering

The project has also made us refocus on the cow type we want on the farm. We are trying to breed a more compact cow that can look after herself on a forage-based diet year-round.

We see outwintering options, such as kale, fodder beet and stubble turnips, playing a key role in the farm system going forward, to reduce wintering costs.

Our fixed costs are high enough as it is without building another shed.

Outwintering is allowing us to spread our fixed costs over more heads without any capital investment in infrastructure.

Outwintering is also more environmentally friendly. We are burning less diesel harvesting and carting feed to stock.

The forage crops are mopping up any residual nitrogen in the ground post-cereal harvest, and we are keeping a living plant in the ground virtually all-year round.

This reduces nutrient loss, soil erosion and provides a habitat for wildlife through the winter months.

The Duguid family

North Cranna, Aberchirder, Aberdeenshire

We farm 164ha here at Cranna. The majority of the ground is in grass, with about 30-35ha of winter barley and 10-12ha of turnips grown annually.

At the beginning of the project we were running over 90 spring-calving and around 60 autumn-calving cows, as well as a 200-ewe flock.

At that time we felt any further expansion of stock numbers on the farm would have to be on the sheep side, as winter accommodation was a limiting factor for the cattle enterprise.

However, after some shed alterations to increase capacity and through the use of forage crops to shorten the winter period, we now see the opportunity to push cow numbers further on the farm.

In the first two years of the programme cow numbers were slightly lower than they had been, as we tightened the calving interval and identified under-performing cows.

This led us to have a higher-than-normal culling rate for a period. However, it has left us in a much stronger position to push things on in the future.

Bulling heifers

This year we have 35 heifers mated to join the spring herd, while a further 17 will be calving shortly, to join the autumn herd.

Obviously, it will depend on how many of the spring heifers are in-calf, but we are hoping to be around the 170-cow mark between the two herds.

In this time we have also pushed ewe numbers up by 100 to 300. We are holding numbers at this for the moment, until there is a bit more certainty in the market on the sheep side of things.

The biggest thing that has allowed us to push on stock numbers is that we are both growing and utilising more forage on the farm than ever before.

This has been achieved with just minor alterations to the system that was in place previously. Correcting soil nutrient deficiencies and moving to a rotational grazing system has been the backbone of the success.

Fixed costs

While the variable costs associated with keeping cows are significant, for us here at Cranna, like on many farms, it is the fixed costs that provide the real barrier to profitability.

Reducing cow numbers will get rid of the variable costs, but in most cases the fixed costs will remain.

This will do nothing to make the farm more profitable. Instead, we are looking to dilute the fixed cost over more cows and more kilos of output each year.