Last week, we visited our son who works on a farm in Scotland. He is in the middle of lambing so it is a busy time.

They have 600 ewes to lamb from early February to the end of March and then the suckler cows start to calve.

In total, they calve about 300 suckler cows from the end of March until the end of May. It’s all a lot of hard work for four to five months.

They have a reasonably good setup for handling all these stock. But at the same time, there is very little room for manoeuvre when things go wrong.

I always get nervous when calving or lambing is proceeding smoothly because I know that there is some problem just around the corner. As we all know, something always goes wrong in farming at some stage.

The weather was bad, with one storm after another bringing wind and lots of cold rain

When we were in Scotland, the lambs were coming thick and fast and the lambing pens were filling up quickly. The weather was bad, with one storm after another bringing wind and lots of cold rain. This meant that they were not able to get ewes and lambs out to the fields.

It’s at times like this that you don’t want any other issues emerging

Any slack that was in the system was gone. To try to keep it all under control, they made up group pens around the yard. The problem then is trying to keep a good eye on all these different groups. It’s at times like this that you don’t want any other issues emerging.

Abundance

Well Scotland was no different to home. When your back is against the wall, problems come in abundance. In Scotland, my son had ewes prolapsing and lambing early with weak lambs. There were also ewes with mastitis, and some mis-mothering. So his stress levels were high.

For once, I was on the outside looking in and I could see a lot of problems and difficulties that have regularly happened on my own farm. It’s a lot easier to be critical when you’re watching on.

There is no such thing as having too many

There were several issues that I could see, although to be fair, they are not easily rectified in the short term. A lot of farmers (myself included) haven’t got enough lambing and calving pens. There is no such thing as having too many. The same goes for group pens.

The other thing that I could see was to do with staff. You definitely need lots of help but that needs to be managed. People were walking after each other, and one person checking if someone else had done a particular job. This happens at home, but I didn’t realise the issue it can be until I saw it happening on someone else’s farm.

Changes

Armed with this perspective, I am going to have to try and make changes. The alternative is to suffer on like a busy fool.

At home, things work slightly differently. Calving starts first, and then lambing kicks in.

My thinking is that I try and get most of the calving done before lambing to try and ease the pressure on housing.

I have 40 cows and heifers to calve in the first three weeks and I only have eight calving pens

But the problems start when you backlog the calving pens, with, for example, a set of twins, or a cow with a weak or sick calf. I have 40 cows and heifers to calve in the first three weeks and I only have eight calving pens. It’s enough if all goes well, but not if things start to go wrong.

It’s going to be difficult for me to do much about this before calving gets going this year, but it has given me food for thought.

All my staff are family, so this makes it a little more difficult

The other thing is staff management. All my staff are family, so this makes it a little more difficult as down the years I have got into a habit of walking after the boys to check that they have done things right. I’m going to have to try to break this habit and split the working hours, and give the boys more responsibility.

There is too much for one person to easily manage.

I have looked in from the outside and seen some problems on a different farm, which has made me realise how I can also make improvements.

It’s not always easy changing habits but we should all look critically at the way we do things and see if there is a better way.

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