Calving will start in the middle of February so preparations are well under way. Cows have moved from ammonia-treated straw-only diet to getting some of our high-quality silage. Some of the thinner cows have been getting silage over the winter but the majority have been on just ammonia straw. We’ve just opened the second pit last week so we are just over halfway through silage reserves. There will be none left over but it should work out just fine.

We will start to sell young stock soon, and by the time you are reading this we may have sold the first batch at Thainstone. We will pull out the heaviest 12-15 animals to get them out of the system. They are quite well-stocked in the shed.They are in, so removing a few of the biggest will give the smaller ones the chance to push on. This will also ease silage usage.

Overall, we think the cattle are looking well – sometimes, when you are looking at them every day, you wonder if they are thriving as they should be. But Declan and Robert reassure us each time they visit that they can see them improving all the time. This year the growing diet is ad lib grass silage (11.6ME and 13.5CP) plus 2kg of a barley-based concentrate. This is 2-2.5kg/hd/d lower than in previous years, yet our liveweight gain is similar at ~1kg/hd/d. It is quite amazing what daily liveweight gain can be achieved from good-quality silage – something that I think is often overlooked on beef farms.

In the past we were guilty of going for bulk rather than quality, always wanting to make sure we had enough to get us through the winter rather than focus on the quality of what was in the pit. However, this left us with poorer silage that needed to be heavily supplemented to maintain performance. Now the focus is on quality first and foremost and, of course, making sure we have sufficient supplies to meet winter requirements.

We have our silage plan done out for this year already. We will be ready to go with silage fertiliser the first week of April with the aim of cutting around 21-25 May. If we can get cut this early it gives us plenty of opportunity for subsequent cuts. This will be weather dependant, of course, but having the plan in place will give us every opportunity of succeeding. No plan, no hope!

Sheep scanning

We had the sheep scanned on 13 January. It’s a nerve-wracking couple of hours in the run up to the scanner’s arrival, as your potential output for the year is set on scanning day. It’s always a relief when the first ewe goes up and you hear the word “twins” from the scanner.

All in all, we are quite happy with the scan results. As we have said before we are moving from a Suffolk cross ewe to Mules over the next few years as we are lambing outdoors and want a ewe that is well able to get on and do what she needs to do by herself.. With that in mind we purchased in 80 Mule gimmers for tupping last back end. The scan results verified that we are moving in the right direction. The Mules scanned at 185% with just two empty, 11 singles, 64 twins and three sets of triplets. A great result for gimmers.

The Suffolk crosses scanned at 166% – there were 28 empty. Why? We suspect these are ewes that had lambing difficulties last year. We had given them the benefit of the doubt, however, they did not repay our trust in them. Again, going forward we will have better records on the ewes. Anything that gives difficulty at lambing in the future won’t have the opportunity to do so a second time. These ewes are in great condition so we will cash them in straight away – no room for passengers here anymore. The rest scanned 36 singles, 122 with twins and 21 with triplets.

So now we know our potential output, 314 lambs, while there will be losses along the way, it’s all about managing the flock to get as many of those through to the point of sale in a few months’ time. We have redoubled our efforts with sheep management in the run up to breeding. Again performance has not been good enough from the ewes in recent years. We weaned 128% last year, and we are aiming for at least 150% for the coming year. We also want to get more fat lambs away earlier in the year.

Grazing plan

We plan to rotationally graze the sheep on a new ley that was under-sown with barley last year. The field is 10.9ha (27ac) and will be split into six similar sized paddocks of about 1.8ha (4.5ac) each. They will also have a seventh paddock which lies just off one side of the field and is similar in size.

We will split it up with four lines of electric fence. While we might get away with three lines, our ewes are not used to the electric fence so an extra line won’t go amiss. This will be powered with a battery fencer with a solar panel to keep the battery charged up throughout the year. As can be seen from the plan of the grazing, it is quite a simple set up. The gateways will be centralised so that each central point only requires two sheep gates to keep stock in any paddock. Water will be supplied via an IBC 1,000 litre tank with a water trough piped off it. Again, correctly positioned, it will be able to serve as many as four paddocks at one time.

This will give us a stocking rate of 19 ewes plus their lambs/ha (8 ewes/ac). We are confident we will have sufficient grass to support this level of stocking. If we take an average ewe weight of 80kg (Mules slightly lighter, Suffolks slightly heavier) eating ~3% of her body weight in early lactation gives a daily demand of: 80kg ewe × 19 ewes/ha × 0.03 intake = 45.6kg.

This means we need 45.6kg grass dry matter (DM) per hectare per day. While grass growth won’t be at this level until maybe early May, we can build grass covers between now and then to carry us through April.

This ground has been rested since mid-December and lambing doesn’t start until the last week of March. That gives it over 100 days’ rest, plenty of time to recover. It will also get an early application of 35kg/ha nitrogen once soil temperatures are sufficient to boost early growth.

Ewes will lamb in a field behind the home house for ease of management. It will be important to have a system whereby we can mark, tail and ring lambs in the first 24 hours while they are still easy to catch. We will then take them over to the sheep grazing as and when they are fit to move, probably around 48 hours, perhaps at 24 hours during the busiest lambing period.

The ewes are just going onto turnips this week, this is again to give the grass a rest for a few weeks and allow it time to recover.

There should be about 2.5-3 weeks feeding there for them. They will have access to a grass field as a lie back. It’s the first time in a lot of years we have grown turnips, but if it goes well, we will do more for next year.