Philip Bews and his family, farm 590acs on Westray’s southern outcrop near Langskaill. While the main enterprise on the farm is their 170 Simmental cross cows they also keep 380 ewes. The farm breeds all their own replacements so they can maintain maximum control over the traits in their herd. Cows designated to breed those replacements will be crossed to Simmental bulls while the rest will be put to a Charolais.

Most cows in the herd can have their genetics traced right back to the 1960s when the predominant breeds were Hereford Friesian crosses. The challenge for the farm is to keep cows at a weight of 650kg as most of the land on the farm is quite wet and lighter cows will eat less during the long winters.

Philip says: “We try to get the majority to calve at 23 to 24 months of age. We have never had a problem doing that because we use a Luing bull with our heifers.

“The main criteria for selecting our replacements is we want cows that calve down on their own and for that calf to get up and suck by himself. After that we cull out anything that has bad feet or udders.”

Identifying the profitable animal

For Philip, negating the effects of long winters is something he feels is paramount to the profitability of his farm. For him the most profitable animal is the one that can hit the farm 500kg target selling weight in as short a time as possible.

“The important thing is to pay a lot of attention to the ration that you feed. It might seem more expensive than silage but if you consider it on a dry matter basis the difference is not that big at all,” he insists.

“I would be very rigorous with my costings,” Philp explains, “for me I treat my stock like a supermarket would their inventory. Every day it has a cost and there is no such thing as a cheap day, so it needs to be sold as soon as possible. While the 21-month steer might fetch a bigger price of £1,100 in the mart, the 12 to 14 month one will only make £200 less for a fraction of the feeding costs. The key is to view that you’re selling on a kilo or tonnage basis rather than a per-head basis.”

Westray’s Zwartbles

When it comes to selecting ewes for breeding replacements once again Philip prioritises udders and feet. All lambs born on the farm will be tagged at birth with those intended for replacements double tagged so they can be identified later.

The breed on the farm is predominately a Texel Blackie cross but the farm has begun to introduce Zwartbles into the mix every three years.

“What’s interesting about the Zwartbles is that the cross seems to have a single lamb predominantly. We won’t breed from the Zwartble cross hogs so they’ll go to a Charlie tup.”

Similar to the cattle, the aim is to move the produce off the farm as quickly as possible by maximising the favourable grass growth conditions Westray enjoys for a few months in the summer. With as many lambs as possible slaughtered by the end of August, a further 100 ewe lambs will be kept before the best 70 are bred as replacements.