Roger and Hilary Bell’s sheep and beef farm near Kells, Co Antrim is run like a military operation.

Decision making on the upland farm is driven by data and all aspects of the business seem to be measured, costed and benchmarked.

The Bell family hosted the National Sheep Association (NSA) last week for the organisation’s AGM and afterwards Roger gave an overview of the 160-acre farm.

He explained that the farm has expanded over the years, with various parcels of land purchased and a well-designed sheep shed built.

These investments have meant the business has had to take on considerable debt which must be repaid.

“It focuses the mind every morning when you have to make profit to pay back bank loans,” Roger said.

There are 580 ewes on the farm, with all lambs finished off grass and around 70 suckler calves are bought at weanling sales each autumn and kept through to finish.

Hilary does the majority of the day-to-day farm work, as Roger works off-farm most of the time as a contractor.

Labour efficient

Labour efficiency is therefore an important consideration for the Bells and a key aim is that most tasks can be completed by one person.

For example, Hilary weighs all lambs in the flock by herself every week during the summer.

Farm layout is vital for this. Gates in each field have been strategically placed to make sheep movements easy and a central lane runs through the main block of land, which leads straight to sheep handling pens in the yard.

A digital weigh bridge has an automatic tag reader and is connected to farm management software which records each lamb’s liveweight and daily weight gain. The ewe flock is grazed in two mobs during the summer, so over 250 ewes and 500 lambs are in each group. It means little time is wasted gathering sheep and it usually takes well under an hour to run each group over the weigh bridge.

Weekly weighing produces a bank of data which is used for making decisions on culling, breeding, selecting replacements and trialling different management measures.

Data decisions

Roger gave the example of a simple on-farm trial they conducted where lambs were assigned different mineral drenches. There was no major difference in growth rates across the lambs and the control group that had no supplement performed the best.

“We don’t use any mineral supplements now. I am not saying you should all do that, but that is what we found on this farm,” he said.

The weekly weighing this year has shown lambs averaged 240g/day from birth to weaning and have been averaging 300g/day since weaning.

Grazing sheep in large groups also allows for better grassland management, with each batch typically moved to fresh grass every three days.

Multiple gates in each field which lead to adjoining fields and the central laneway makes it straightforward for one person to move stock.

Beef cattle

The beef enterprise also involves regular weighing and moves to fresh grass. Roger said cattle have averaged 0.89kg/day so far this year.

A range of different types of calves are purchased, with Roger tending to go for whatever seems best value for money on the day.

Calves are typically 300-330kg when they are bought in. The price of last year’s intake ranged from £680 to £1,180.

Cattle are finished during their second winter from 19-24 months of age, so around 140 cattle are kept each winter and 70 head are grazed during the summer.

The ewe flock on the Bell farm is highly prolific, with scanning rates of over 200% seen most years. Replacements are tupped as ewe lambs and typically scan around 150%.

Ewes are mostly Texel Mule crosses and breeding takes place in October with lambing starting in mid-March.

After breeding, some ewes go to winter grazing on a nearby dairy farm and at Christmas all ewes are scanned and housed in the Bell’s impressive sheep shed.

The shed holds over 500 ewes, with one side tanked with plastic slats and the other is a solid floor with straw bedding.

Ewes are fed a total mixed ration (TMR) through a feeder wagon. No concentrates are fed to ewes directly, so all late pregnancy nutrition is given through the TMR.

The mix includes high quality silage, protected soya and Megalac, with inclusion rates depending on scanning results for each group of ewes.

Lambing

All lambing pens are positioned behind the straw bedded pens in the main sheep shed. Again, labour efficiency is key here. The shed has been carefully laid out, so one person can easily run a freshly lambed ewe into a pen.

Each lamb is tagged, registered on the farm software programme and tailed with a rubber ring before it leaves the lambing pen.

A workstation is positioned in the middle of the lambing pens. It has a hot and cold-water supply, a fridge freezer, and cupboards which are “fully stocked” with everything that is needed for lambing.

“You should not have to leave this shed in the spring,” Roger said.

The first ewes that are due to lamb are penned on the straw floor. It means these pens are freed up early on and can be used to house groups of ewes and lambs for a few days if bad weather delays turnout.

Surplus lambs

A regimented approach is taken to managing surplus lambs. All ewes with triplets have one lifted shortly after birth and surplus colostrum from single ewes, which is kept in the fridge, is fed via a stomach tube.

A lot of effort is put into cross fostering orphan lambs on to ewes scanned with singles. Most of these ewes are assisted at lambing with fluids collected and used for the cross fostering process.

Roger said around 80 lambs were cross fostered on to single ewes this year and “less than a handful” were unsuccessful.

There are still plenty of pet lambs though, with 92 reared on the farm this year alone.

These lambs are weaned off milk once they hit 9kg of weight gain. This can mean weaning very early, sometimes as young as three weeks old. A powdered concentrate which costs £800/t is offered to weaned pets initially.

Roger said his initial calculations suggest each pet lamb consumed £20 worth of milk powder and £60 of concentrates this year.

With fat lambs bringing in £130, it means the pets are leaving a reasonable profit. However, last year when fat lambs were £100, it was much more marginal.

All fields on the Bell farm are soil sampled every winter and this forms the basis of fertiliser plans for the year ahead.

“If a field has an index two for P or K, I want to know if that is a two heading to a three, or a two moving towards one,” Roger said.

“If soils are only analysed every five years, then that field could be at index zero the next time it is sampled again,” he added.

The Bells try to make full use of available organic manure. Slurry is targeted at silage ground and grazing fields where indexes are low and almost all fields got a very light coating of farmyard manure this year.

“I put a load of dung across three acres. Some farmers that I do work for would want three loads over one acre,” Roger said.

Chemical fertiliser usage is low on the farm. Urea is is spread in late February or early March at one bag per acre. “The year before last, I didn’t have to spread any other fertiliser until late in the summer when I was building grass for tupping,” Roger said.