When your steading is 1,100ft above sea level and the highest point on your farm reaches 1,700ft, you need to be prepared for tough conditions. Especially when the farm must support 200 cows and 1,000 ewes.

That is the task that faces John and Willie Aiken at Carlophill Farm in the Scottish Borders every day. Farming in what John refers to as “one of the hardest places in Scotland” requires a clear and defined plan. A priority for the farm is also to ensure that staff and management can have time away when required, to pursue other interests and hobbies. To make the most of the 1,000 owned and 1,000 rented acres and their time off-farm, they have aimed to breed easy-management animals.

The family has been farming at Carlophill for 65 years. John explains: “In 1962 the first cows were bought, 21 highland cows. By the mid 1980s we had 90 Hereford Friesian cross cows. Now we are nearly 100% Saler, with 260 to calve in 2018 and a small number of cows still with those Hereford genetics. The ewes, which were previously Blackies, are now Lleyns, with 75% crossed back to a Lleyn tup and the rest to brown-faced cross tups.”

Ease of calving, ease of mind

For Carlophill Farm, once Salers arrived on the farm there was no turning back. They value the breed for its reputed fertility and ease of calving, and it has, over the last number of years, become the dominant breed on the farm.

“This year we have a batch of 166 cows and out of them 165 are in calf,” says Willie.

The performance also stretched to the heifers, where 57 heifers were run with a single bull for six weeks and 54 are now in calf, to calve at two years old.

With the considerable number of cows on the farm managed between two men plus a part-time worker, when it comes to calving time it is important that problems are few and far between.

“The majority of the cows here calve themselves,” says Willie. “In fact, I’ve only ever had to calve one of the Salers myself and that was four years ago.”

Due to the wet ground and often challenging conditions on the farm, calving does not begin until the last week in May and for the most part is completed before the Highland Show. All cows are vaccinated for rotavirus and once 10 have calved down the calves are tagged, dehorned and castrated, if necessary.

Swelling numbers and a growing need for new accommodation facilities meant that in 2013 the farm invested in a new open-span shed, capable of holding over 160 cows in a solitary group. The sides are bedded with sawdust, with the central passage scrapped once every three days. A straw-bedded creep area is provided for calves in the rear corner of the shed.

Cows can pass from the shed into the older building where they have access to water and feed facilities, this lowered the cost of the building, as well as extending the life of the sawdust bedding.

The route to market

John and Willie sell all their calves, bar those kept as replacements, as stores and as bulling heifers. The calves will be weaned at seven to eight months of age, before being sold at 11 months. The vast majority of sales are made privately on-farm, facilitated through Border Livestock.

“I wouldn’t sell anyone anything for breeding that I wouldn’t keep myself. I prioritise quiet cows, with the system we have we can’t afford to have any wild cows because a lot of the time Dad will be here on his own,” Willie explains.

Docility is perhaps one of the biggest negatives that surround Saler cows. But at Carlophill the belief is that you can breed for it in the same way you can breed for weight gain.

“A wild cow will have a wild calf and if it’s a heifer and we keep her to breed then she is more than likely going to have a wild calf too. That’s why the cow we’re striving for is a quiet one that calves herself.”

All bulls on the farm are Saler and this is not something the farm sees changing into the future.

Willie elaborates by saying: “It might be that if we had some Charolais bulls we’d put some better calves on the ground, but it wouldn’t fit the management system. The fact the cows more or less look after themselves means we can keep more of them and produce more output in terms of kilos sold off the farm.”

Maximising materials to optimise output

Lambing, much like calving, must be compact for Willie and John. Increasing the level of grass in the diet of their stock is something they are actively trying to do. This means that turning sheep out once they have lambed is crucial. Tups are only run with the ewes for four weeks and, currently, the lambing percentage is 185%. While it is possibly not as high as could be expected, with Lleyns it reduces the need for additional handling and staff at lambing time for the farm.

Sheep had originally been kept on the farm to clean up grass at the end of the year, but with the addition of polytunnels to the farm the ewe numbers have swelled.

“The tunnels were left behind by a potato grower after a contract finished, so this is where we lamb our ewes now. They are housed here in groups of 40 to 50 once they are scanned, or alternatively if the weather deteriorates. Once they lamb they’ll spend a day in the lambing pen and then a day in the nursery pen before they’re let out.”

In the past, the farm had issues with watery mouth and joint-ail, so improving hygiene has been one aspect of lambing time that has been addressed. After a ewe and her lambs have passed through an individual pen, it is cleaned out and hydrated lime is spread to minimise the levels of bacteria present.

“It’s a very good environment in here. It is always dry because the UV light passes through the plastic sheeting and that means we use hardly any straw at lambing time. It is also very airy. The tunnels are two dual-span tunnels and are 1,000 sqm each. If we had the choice again we would make it one span, so we could get in with a bigger tractor, but that is all hindsight I guess,” Willie reflects.

“We’ve made do with what we have and that’s reflected throughout the farm. For example, we feed all our cows with a lift, that is the only piece of machinery that needs to start in the mornings. We aim to cut our silage in mid-June every year for the pit, but we’ll also make bales as a grassland management tool. If growth gets away from us, we can cut some for bales and that keeps the quality in the grass.”