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All six farms have an ambitious plan to improve overall farm profitability over the coming years. Much of this increase will come in the form of more kilos produced within the farm gates.
The idea behind this is that as you increase farm output, you dilute the fixed costs on the farm across a greater number of kilos.
National average figures show the cost of keeping a cow for a year lies somewhere in the region of £650 to £800. In most cases over 60% of this cost is comprised of fixed costs.
Therefore any increase in kilos of output, be it through better liveweight gain or increasing stock numbers will have a positive effect on net margin.
Increasing numbers without increasing labour
Yet, our farmers are already very busy at peak times of the year. How are we going to increase numbers without increasing employed labour?
The answer to this question is twofold:
Firstly, when drawing up the farm plans with the farm, one of the main goals for each farm was to make each farm system as simple as possible. In this way we streamline the workload.
Take calving for example, one of the busiest times on most farms. However, calving is quite spread out on a lot of the units which means more time is spent at the task than is necessary.
Shortening the calving interval on all the farms will mean we are calving in a more concentrated time when our sole focus will be on exactly that – calving.
Once it is finished, we move on to the next task. In this way, across the whole farm business and all enterprises we prioritise the workload.
Secondly, we are getting each farm to take a closer look at their herds/flocks to see if they are performing adequately for the farmers.
What percentage of cows are you currently assisting with calving? Are you happy to assist one in five cows or one in 10?
This can only answered by the farmer themselves. If the number is quite large, are you being financially rewarded to do so?
Should I have to turn up every ewe to ensure her lambs are sucking?
Not happy?
If you are not happy with the answer to some of the questions, what options do you have to change it?
All of the issues above are almost completely in the farmer’s control. If assistance at calving is too high – is the nutrition of the cows being correctly managed? Are they in the correct body condition score (BCS)? Is the bull too hard to calve? Can I select replacements only from cows that consistently calve on their own?
While these changes will not pay off over night, if we so not start to make changes the situation will never improve.
You can watch a video of the discussion here:
SHARING OPTIONS: