To be successful, a business must have clear targets and objectives. Last year, at the beginning of the programme, the Focus farms were benchmarked and from this a set of targets were drawn up and agreed on. One year on, the farms have been independently benchmarked by SAC Consulting once again. The results show great progress over a relatively short space of time. Many of the changes in practices will only begin to pay dividends in the coming year. However, with minor tweaks and changes in place, the average gross margin is up £115/cow across all farms.

Over the next few weeks we will report on each of the six farms, the changes they have made and the effect it has had on the bottom line.

Mackay Farm Review of year one

We are over a year into the project now and have already seen some great progress. We started last year with a lot of soil sampling and lime spreading to bring some fields up to optimum pH. While this is a long-term process, we can already see the benefits.

Using rotational grazing last summer we doubled the normal stocking rate on these fields. While the first half of the season was quite good for growing grass, the latter half of the summer and into autumn was very difficult.

Measuring performance on the farm has been really worthwhile at identifying under-performing cows. We were very happy to see that the average daily gain in the spring herd from birth to weaning was over 1.3kg/day. This tells us that the cow type on farm is working well. Cows are predominantly Angus and Simmental cross with more Shorthorn genetics coming into the herd in the coming years. This is to maintain the strong maternal traits in the herd while keeping a check on overall cow size.

Last year we achieved an overall weaning percentage of 90% on cows exposed to the bull. While this is good, we are aiming for 94% in the future.

A weakness of our business is the reliance on support. In order to insulate ourselves from any possible support reductions, we are looking at increasing our livestock output. For now, we will graze some lighter cattle (a mixture of our own and some bought in) for the summer. This will make use of some surplus grazing and drive the business output.

Benchmark

We are happy with the jump in gross margin/cow in the first year, an average increase of over £240/cow. This has been achieved mainly through managing feed costs. By this we mean through better grazing, which increased performance of growing stock, improving silage quality and thus reducing the amount of concentrates we have needed to feed, and utilising cow body condition to manage winter diet costs. The most encouraging news is that there is still plenty of room for further improvement throughout the system over the coming years.

Aim for this year

This year we will do more rotational grazing, increase the number of paddocks per grazing group ie the fields that were split into three last year will be halved again this year to make a rotation of six paddocks. This will give us more control and not leave us quite so far behind if we do have to take a section out as silage.

We are also using the wintering lambs again to bare-off the silage fields to maintain grass quality. Our 2017 silage was far better than the previous years with the analysis showing that there is 0.24kg/day more potential liveweight gain in it.

Having gone out and dug some holes over winter, our next task for the soil is to alleviate compaction. One field we tested has never grown a great deal of grass since it was sown out four years ago. And yet the test showed that the soil status was good. After investigating further with the spade, we have found some serious compaction in the field. This will need a sub-soiler to get underneath it to break the pan and let some air in. We are also doing some drainage work at the minute to help get water flowing and all ground to dry out.

Duffus Farm Review of year one

With the first year of the project under our belt, we are starting to reap some rewards. Initial soil analysis showed us that we needed to invest heavily in lime to correct pH levels. We spread 200t in spring of last year to start with, this has had an immediate impact as we have seen fields perform better last year than a lot of years before.

We weaned the lambs a month earlier than we would have last year. The idea behind this was to allow the ewes some time to build up condition prior to going to the tup. Unfortunately, with the way the weather was throughout the second half of the year, it’s been hard on the ewes and overall scanning percentage is back a little on normal. The empty rate was quite low but the number of singles is far higher.

We also rotationally grazed the autumn herd last year at Glenconglass. The calves did really well and come sale time, on the same sale week as their peers went off the year before, they were 13kg heavier on average, worth around £30/head.

Output on the farm needs to be lifted to dilute the fixed costs. This winter, to drive output, we purchased 23 store cattle in the autumn at just over the 200kg mark and have fed them through the winter on some extra silage that we had made. They will be sold in early April and having put around 200kg on to them, we will have raised their value by over £400/hd at a cost of around £160/hd.

Benchmark

The spring herd has jumped £116/hd gross margin while the autumn cows are up £81/hd. A lot of the changes we are making in the programme will really pay dividends in the long term but it’s encouraging to see how small changes can have a positive impact in such a short space of time. We have culled poorer performers and with them out of the system we expect to see further increases next year.

The gross margin on the ewes is back £12/hd. We expected this after the huge losses in the space of 48 hours last April. This was due to heavy snowfall right at the peak of lambing. There was over 100 lambs lost in those two days alone.

Aim for this year

This year, to avoid any repeat of last year’s losses at lambing, we have built a shed to house the mules and ease the pressure on the shelter in the lambing fields. The plan is for them to be out by day and in by night. The Blackies will spend all lambing outside, grazing by day and by night in a well-sheltered field nearby.

Cattle-wise, we now have 20 heifers home as the foundation of our hill herd. Fifteen of them are Highland cross and the remaining five are pure Gascons. They will see the bull this summer for the first time. Long-term, they will serve two purposes; improving the hill grazing for the sheep and improve output by increasing the number of kilos produced each year on farm.