One of the major focuses of the Farm Profit Programme is to get farmers onto other people’s farms to experience how they overcome the daily challenges, to share experiences and exchange ideas. Often, farmers are so busy with the day-to-day tasks of running their own farm, there is seldom time to get to see how other people manage theirs. While we may think what we do on our farm is the norm – in reality, it can be quite different to other farmers’ practices, strategies and method of work.
With this in mind, we have been getting the Focus farmers out onto each other’s farms over the last few months. Last week, we came together on Charles and Alison Webster’s Ardhuncart Farm near Alford.
Charles and Alison were keen for the group to see the challenges that they face, especially during winter months. A limiting factor for any expansion on the cattle side at Ardhuncart is the availability of winter accommodation. This means that some cattle are out-wintered. However, the soil type on the farm is quite heavy, meaning that the ground can suffer during very wet periods of weather. Since the meeting, some ideas have surfaced from the other farmers to help the Websters make better use of space on the farm.
We also took the opportunity to have a look at the ewes on the turnips. This is the first year that they have put the ewes on to turnips for a portion of the winter. However, with the simplicity of the system that is in place, they are quite pleased with the results and Alison is keen to try it again.
The turnips were a method of using a small field normally sown out in barley that wasn’t sown this year due to being part of the car park for their daughter’s wedding party! Charles went for a low-cost, low-input turnip crop and simply mixed turnip seed with one bag of fertiliser. This went in the hopper of the one-pass and he went in to the barley stubble directly with the one pass without ploughing. The whole cost of the operation was less than £500 and whilst yields are not as good as under a higher-input system, it has still resulted in a cost per tonne of dry matter of just £60.
The ewes are being strip-grazed across this now and will be moved back on to grass parks by the time of reading. While it may only have provided three weeks of feed for the ewes, it allowed grass parks that would normally be stocked at this time of year a rest.
Steven Sandison
Also on the day, the group got to hear from Nuffield scholar, Steven Sandison as he presented the findings from his Nuffield travels. Steven’s was also the first monitor farm in Orkney and he shared his experiences with the group of his time in the project and the opportunities it opened up for him and his farm business.
When Steven did his initial whole farm review for the monitor farm programme in 2012, he found that he was not achieving the recommended targets set out by both QMS and SRUC in terms of cows scanning in-calf, live calves born and calves weaned per hundred cows. This was very frustrating for him as he felt he was doing as good a job as he could possibly do. Looking at the industry as a whole, QMS estimates just 82% of cows in Scotland are producing a calf each year, meaning there are 10% less calves produced than what we are told is achievable.
The targets for every 100 cows put to the bull for a breeding period of between nine and 12 weeks are:
96% scanned in-calf.94% live calves.92% calves weaned.Questioning these targets, Steven felt that either they are unrealistic or, as an industry, beef farmers are under-achieving. This led him to apply to , the Nuffield Farming Scholarships Trust where he was sponsored by the MacRobert Trust to carry out a study to answer the following two questions:
1. What is a realistic number of calves farmers should aim to wean from every 100 cows exposed to the bull?
2. What do the farms who are achieving the best results have in common?
From February 2015 to January 2016 Steven visited over 100 farms across UK, Ireland, Canada, Norway and Sweden with a list of 22 questions for each farm. These were farms that were recommended to Steven as doing things right and he described them as average and above average in terms of overall performance.
After completing visits in the UK and Ireland (70 farms in total) Steven looked at the top seven performing herds in terms of weaning percentage. These farms were achieving a weaning rate of 93% - exceeding the target figure. The bottom seven farms as a comparison, had a weaning rate of 84%. It is important to remember while these are the ‘bottom’ 10% in this study, they are still achieving a better weaning percentage than the average suckler producer in Scotland.
So where are the bottom 10% losing production? Table 1 compares the average top seven and bottom seven in terms of scanning, calving and weaning percentages to help identify where in the cycle losses are occurring.
Scanning percentage: On average, the group was achieving a 93% scanning rate, compared to 95% for the top performers and 91.5% for the bottom seven farms. Calving percentage: This is where the gap between the top producers and the rest starts to expand. The average for the 70 farms was 95%, however, the top seven farms were achieving the same calving percentage as they were scanning percentage at 95%. The bottom seven farms had a calving percentage of 86.5.So, were the top seven farms not losing any calves before or during the calving season? They were, however, twins were making up for the losses. Farms with a heavy Simmental influence were recording more sets of twins than other breeds.
Weaning percentage: The top performers were getting 93 calves weaned from every 100 cows compared to the bottom 10% weaning 84 and the average weaning 89 calves per 100 cows. However, the most interesting fact was that the top performers were weaning more calves from a 9.5 week calving interval.
Compare this to the average 14 week spread while the bottom 10% were weaning fewer calves, 84 per 100, yet taking a massive 28 weeks to calve cows – working harder to achieve less.
Profit
All the above means nothing if is not making your farm more profitable at the end of the day. One of Steven’s questions to the farmers he visited was if they were making profit without subsidy?
From all the farms visited, 50% said they were, 12% were breaking even while 38% said they were not making a profit without subsidy.
So is there a connection between weaning percentage and profit?
Six of the top seven farms were making profit while one was breaking even, while six of the bottom seven farms were not making a profit with one breaking even.
Next week we will look at the driving factors behind these performance figures under the headings of: nutrition, genetics, health and management.
One of the major focuses of the Farm Profit Programme is to get farmers onto other people’s farms to experience how they overcome the daily challenges, to share experiences and exchange ideas. Often, farmers are so busy with the day-to-day tasks of running their own farm, there is seldom time to get to see how other people manage theirs. While we may think what we do on our farm is the norm – in reality, it can be quite different to other farmers’ practices, strategies and method of work.
With this in mind, we have been getting the Focus farmers out onto each other’s farms over the last few months. Last week, we came together on Charles and Alison Webster’s Ardhuncart Farm near Alford.
Charles and Alison were keen for the group to see the challenges that they face, especially during winter months. A limiting factor for any expansion on the cattle side at Ardhuncart is the availability of winter accommodation. This means that some cattle are out-wintered. However, the soil type on the farm is quite heavy, meaning that the ground can suffer during very wet periods of weather. Since the meeting, some ideas have surfaced from the other farmers to help the Websters make better use of space on the farm.
We also took the opportunity to have a look at the ewes on the turnips. This is the first year that they have put the ewes on to turnips for a portion of the winter. However, with the simplicity of the system that is in place, they are quite pleased with the results and Alison is keen to try it again.
The turnips were a method of using a small field normally sown out in barley that wasn’t sown this year due to being part of the car park for their daughter’s wedding party! Charles went for a low-cost, low-input turnip crop and simply mixed turnip seed with one bag of fertiliser. This went in the hopper of the one-pass and he went in to the barley stubble directly with the one pass without ploughing. The whole cost of the operation was less than £500 and whilst yields are not as good as under a higher-input system, it has still resulted in a cost per tonne of dry matter of just £60.
The ewes are being strip-grazed across this now and will be moved back on to grass parks by the time of reading. While it may only have provided three weeks of feed for the ewes, it allowed grass parks that would normally be stocked at this time of year a rest.
Steven Sandison
Also on the day, the group got to hear from Nuffield scholar, Steven Sandison as he presented the findings from his Nuffield travels. Steven’s was also the first monitor farm in Orkney and he shared his experiences with the group of his time in the project and the opportunities it opened up for him and his farm business.
When Steven did his initial whole farm review for the monitor farm programme in 2012, he found that he was not achieving the recommended targets set out by both QMS and SRUC in terms of cows scanning in-calf, live calves born and calves weaned per hundred cows. This was very frustrating for him as he felt he was doing as good a job as he could possibly do. Looking at the industry as a whole, QMS estimates just 82% of cows in Scotland are producing a calf each year, meaning there are 10% less calves produced than what we are told is achievable.
The targets for every 100 cows put to the bull for a breeding period of between nine and 12 weeks are:
96% scanned in-calf.94% live calves.92% calves weaned.Questioning these targets, Steven felt that either they are unrealistic or, as an industry, beef farmers are under-achieving. This led him to apply to , the Nuffield Farming Scholarships Trust where he was sponsored by the MacRobert Trust to carry out a study to answer the following two questions:
1. What is a realistic number of calves farmers should aim to wean from every 100 cows exposed to the bull?
2. What do the farms who are achieving the best results have in common?
From February 2015 to January 2016 Steven visited over 100 farms across UK, Ireland, Canada, Norway and Sweden with a list of 22 questions for each farm. These were farms that were recommended to Steven as doing things right and he described them as average and above average in terms of overall performance.
After completing visits in the UK and Ireland (70 farms in total) Steven looked at the top seven performing herds in terms of weaning percentage. These farms were achieving a weaning rate of 93% - exceeding the target figure. The bottom seven farms as a comparison, had a weaning rate of 84%. It is important to remember while these are the ‘bottom’ 10% in this study, they are still achieving a better weaning percentage than the average suckler producer in Scotland.
So where are the bottom 10% losing production? Table 1 compares the average top seven and bottom seven in terms of scanning, calving and weaning percentages to help identify where in the cycle losses are occurring.
Scanning percentage: On average, the group was achieving a 93% scanning rate, compared to 95% for the top performers and 91.5% for the bottom seven farms. Calving percentage: This is where the gap between the top producers and the rest starts to expand. The average for the 70 farms was 95%, however, the top seven farms were achieving the same calving percentage as they were scanning percentage at 95%. The bottom seven farms had a calving percentage of 86.5.So, were the top seven farms not losing any calves before or during the calving season? They were, however, twins were making up for the losses. Farms with a heavy Simmental influence were recording more sets of twins than other breeds.
Weaning percentage: The top performers were getting 93 calves weaned from every 100 cows compared to the bottom 10% weaning 84 and the average weaning 89 calves per 100 cows. However, the most interesting fact was that the top performers were weaning more calves from a 9.5 week calving interval.
Compare this to the average 14 week spread while the bottom 10% were weaning fewer calves, 84 per 100, yet taking a massive 28 weeks to calve cows – working harder to achieve less.
Profit
All the above means nothing if is not making your farm more profitable at the end of the day. One of Steven’s questions to the farmers he visited was if they were making profit without subsidy?
From all the farms visited, 50% said they were, 12% were breaking even while 38% said they were not making a profit without subsidy.
So is there a connection between weaning percentage and profit?
Six of the top seven farms were making profit while one was breaking even, while six of the bottom seven farms were not making a profit with one breaking even.
Next week we will look at the driving factors behind these performance figures under the headings of: nutrition, genetics, health and management.
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