We are nearly half way through autumn calving and so far, without cursing things, there haven’t been too many problems.
We did have one vet assist for a breech, but barring pulling a heifers calf, every other cow has calved herself.
The cows are currently grazing on an area of rough ground behind the yard at home and with the grass tailing off, we have put out some straw with high-protein molasses on it.
To keep costs down cattle will be held out for as long as possible.
Those that have calved are on some of the in-bye land but we are starting to get tight for grass. Hopefully we can keep them out until the end of the month to save on feeding and bedding.
Bedding won’t be as bad this year, as we do have the wood chips for most of the stock this winter but we will still need to keep the younger calves on straw.
Last year’s autumn calves are currently grazing at Glenconglass. We have started to give them around 1kg/head/day of barley to start the transition to their winter diet.
They have been on top-quality after-grass since weaning.
However, grass growth rates have virtually stopped here already and so they will be housed in the coming fortnight.
Drafting stores
The plan is to house them once they finish in the field they are currently in. At housing time, we will weigh them all and any over 430kg will be sold immediately. The rest will be kept to grow on to 430kg.
Having the weigh scales on farm is a real benefit from this point of view as we know exactly how the animals are performing and the optimum time to sell them.
It is quite easy to run them through the weigh crate and it provides a lot of information on the herd. We can also use this weigh data to compare how the progeny from each stock bull is doing, as well as identifying cows that aren’t doing the business in terms of breeding.
We will take a pick of heifers to retain before we sell them and they will join the spring calves once they are weaned and on their winter diet before they go off for bulling.
Spring herd
The spring calves are coming up on weaning and we plan to make a start to that at the end of the month too. The calf creeps are out and the calves have started to eat quite a bit now.
We have been short of grass all season and the cows will benefit from being weaned a month earlier than last year.
As it is, a group of 30 cows are getting through a bale of straw a day at the moment so the sooner we get them weaned the better.
Last year we were too slow getting the calves off the cows and as a result the spring cows were thinner than we would have liked coming into the house.
The cows are currently grazing on an area of rough ground behind the yard along with some straw with high-protein molasses on it.
The current plan (weather permitting) is to wean the calves and house them while the cows remain outside until the New Year. This should help to save on bedding costs.
Looking at our silage reserve, things look to be alright at the moment, with a similar amount of the silage in the yard as last year.
We have yet to get analysis back but looking at what we have, it will be a lot drier. This should mean that we have a decent reserve.
Hill herd
We plan to keep the hill cows outside right up until calving.
This will mean several things. For one, it will save us bedding costs. More importantly, we will be able to look at them all come spring and see who has made it through the winter still in good condition and who has struggled.
This will help us to decide those that will make up the future of the herd and those that we won’t want to breed long term.
Calved cows on some of the in-bye land but grass is to get tight.
Sheep woes
Looking to the future, as we have previously mentioned, our business needs to make more use of the hill and increase output from it.
We have recently sat down and taken a rough count of where we are with the sheep so far this year and we have found that the gross margin has shrunk again. I’m really not looking forward to the full benchmarking exercise come winter.
Admittedly, it was a hard winter and we had to feed the ewes from before Christmas through until lambing.
With the weather being so poor at tupping, scanning also wasn’t great, meaning that we just do not have enough lambs to generate a decent return.
Coupled with that is the fact that we have a lot of ewes missing on the hill and things don’t look great for the sheep.
However, all is not lost and between ourselves and the project advisers, we are going to throw the kitchen sink at them this coming year to see if we can make some improvements.
While there would be no tears shed if we were to sell all the sheep in the morning, we know that this farm needs sheep.
We can cut back on numbers but that alone will not sort the problem. If there are 50, or 500 ewes on farm, they all need to be paying their way.
Sheep plan
Firstly, we are going to condition score all of the ewes in the next few days and draw off the lean ones. There shouldn’t be a large amount under conditioned as they were weaned early and the hill has been quite green this year.
For this reason we plan to cull hard within this group of ewes. The rest will be given preferential treatment to build condition ahead of the tup. We still have the best part of a month to improve condition pre-tupping.
Secondly, at lambing, we are going to tag lambs and pair them with their mothers.
This will mean that we can start to really make progress in the genetics aspect and identify those that are bringing decent lambs back from the hill with them. We will work on culling the bottom end and those without lambs for the next few years.
This is extra work for us at lambing time but the new lambing shed will help and it is a step that needs to be taken to make the whole job work.
Thirdly, we have also spent a bit more money on tups this year, with the intention of bringing in better genetics.
Blackface lambs are not the easiest to sell store and our plan is that by improving the quality of sires, we should improve the quality of the lambs. Coupling this with a stronger selection policy with the ewes, things should start to improve.
One good note with the sheep is that we have managed to sell a lot more of the lamb’s fat from mainly grass alone.
This does provide a huge lift in sale price achieved pushing a store lamb into a finished lamb price. This is being achieved through better grassland management and earlier weaning.
The last of the lambs for fattening have just gone on to the stubble turnips and we hope there will be a decent draw of fat lambs from them in a few weeks’ time.
We are nearly half way through autumn calving and so far, without cursing things, there haven’t been too many problems.
We did have one vet assist for a breech, but barring pulling a heifers calf, every other cow has calved herself.
The cows are currently grazing on an area of rough ground behind the yard at home and with the grass tailing off, we have put out some straw with high-protein molasses on it.
To keep costs down cattle will be held out for as long as possible.
Those that have calved are on some of the in-bye land but we are starting to get tight for grass. Hopefully we can keep them out until the end of the month to save on feeding and bedding.
Bedding won’t be as bad this year, as we do have the wood chips for most of the stock this winter but we will still need to keep the younger calves on straw.
Last year’s autumn calves are currently grazing at Glenconglass. We have started to give them around 1kg/head/day of barley to start the transition to their winter diet.
They have been on top-quality after-grass since weaning.
However, grass growth rates have virtually stopped here already and so they will be housed in the coming fortnight.
Drafting stores
The plan is to house them once they finish in the field they are currently in. At housing time, we will weigh them all and any over 430kg will be sold immediately. The rest will be kept to grow on to 430kg.
Having the weigh scales on farm is a real benefit from this point of view as we know exactly how the animals are performing and the optimum time to sell them.
It is quite easy to run them through the weigh crate and it provides a lot of information on the herd. We can also use this weigh data to compare how the progeny from each stock bull is doing, as well as identifying cows that aren’t doing the business in terms of breeding.
We will take a pick of heifers to retain before we sell them and they will join the spring calves once they are weaned and on their winter diet before they go off for bulling.
Spring herd
The spring calves are coming up on weaning and we plan to make a start to that at the end of the month too. The calf creeps are out and the calves have started to eat quite a bit now.
We have been short of grass all season and the cows will benefit from being weaned a month earlier than last year.
As it is, a group of 30 cows are getting through a bale of straw a day at the moment so the sooner we get them weaned the better.
Last year we were too slow getting the calves off the cows and as a result the spring cows were thinner than we would have liked coming into the house.
The cows are currently grazing on an area of rough ground behind the yard along with some straw with high-protein molasses on it.
The current plan (weather permitting) is to wean the calves and house them while the cows remain outside until the New Year. This should help to save on bedding costs.
Looking at our silage reserve, things look to be alright at the moment, with a similar amount of the silage in the yard as last year.
We have yet to get analysis back but looking at what we have, it will be a lot drier. This should mean that we have a decent reserve.
Hill herd
We plan to keep the hill cows outside right up until calving.
This will mean several things. For one, it will save us bedding costs. More importantly, we will be able to look at them all come spring and see who has made it through the winter still in good condition and who has struggled.
This will help us to decide those that will make up the future of the herd and those that we won’t want to breed long term.
Calved cows on some of the in-bye land but grass is to get tight.
Sheep woes
Looking to the future, as we have previously mentioned, our business needs to make more use of the hill and increase output from it.
We have recently sat down and taken a rough count of where we are with the sheep so far this year and we have found that the gross margin has shrunk again. I’m really not looking forward to the full benchmarking exercise come winter.
Admittedly, it was a hard winter and we had to feed the ewes from before Christmas through until lambing.
With the weather being so poor at tupping, scanning also wasn’t great, meaning that we just do not have enough lambs to generate a decent return.
Coupled with that is the fact that we have a lot of ewes missing on the hill and things don’t look great for the sheep.
However, all is not lost and between ourselves and the project advisers, we are going to throw the kitchen sink at them this coming year to see if we can make some improvements.
While there would be no tears shed if we were to sell all the sheep in the morning, we know that this farm needs sheep.
We can cut back on numbers but that alone will not sort the problem. If there are 50, or 500 ewes on farm, they all need to be paying their way.
Sheep plan
Firstly, we are going to condition score all of the ewes in the next few days and draw off the lean ones. There shouldn’t be a large amount under conditioned as they were weaned early and the hill has been quite green this year.
For this reason we plan to cull hard within this group of ewes. The rest will be given preferential treatment to build condition ahead of the tup. We still have the best part of a month to improve condition pre-tupping.
Secondly, at lambing, we are going to tag lambs and pair them with their mothers.
This will mean that we can start to really make progress in the genetics aspect and identify those that are bringing decent lambs back from the hill with them. We will work on culling the bottom end and those without lambs for the next few years.
This is extra work for us at lambing time but the new lambing shed will help and it is a step that needs to be taken to make the whole job work.
Thirdly, we have also spent a bit more money on tups this year, with the intention of bringing in better genetics.
Blackface lambs are not the easiest to sell store and our plan is that by improving the quality of sires, we should improve the quality of the lambs. Coupling this with a stronger selection policy with the ewes, things should start to improve.
One good note with the sheep is that we have managed to sell a lot more of the lamb’s fat from mainly grass alone.
This does provide a huge lift in sale price achieved pushing a store lamb into a finished lamb price. This is being achieved through better grassland management and earlier weaning.
The last of the lambs for fattening have just gone on to the stubble turnips and we hope there will be a decent draw of fat lambs from them in a few weeks’ time.
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