Raymond McKinnon began managing Grove Farms, just outside Irongray in Dumfries, in 1984 and has been involved in the business for the last 42 years. The farm runs 500 suckler cows over 1,250 acres of owned land that is supplemented with 300 acres of rented ground during peak grazing season.

Formerly, all stock was bought in as first-cross dairy animals, but in the last five years the farm has made the move to breeding their own replacements. The herd is now made up of Simmental Shorthorn crosses. In addition to the cows, the farm also runs 270 breeding ewes that act as a management tool for cleaning out ragwort.

Breed-and-butter stuff

“At the time when we started to make the move away from first-cross dairy animals,” Raymond says, “we felt they were beginning to cost too much. We liked the high milk yields they had, but there was more to be gained in terms of quality in the Simmental Shorthorn cross.”

Originally, the farm moved from the dairy crosses to Herefords. “We had awful trouble with the Herefords. We found their temperament too hard to manage and what we look for in the cows is a nice easy temperament and plenty of milk”

Milk yield is one of the highest priorities for the breeding stock, as the farm aims to sell all progeny – bar those kept as replacements – at six months old. All stock is sold through United Auctions in Stirling, with the first 140 calves sold at the start of October and another 120 planned for this Monday.

Selling the stock off before housing ensures the farm’s limited accommodation capacity is not stretched even further. At present, most of the cows are housed on a combination of slats and cubicles, but a remaining 100 are still outdoors on grass. They will receive extra ration supplementation on concrete, to prevent poaching. If the weather is favourable, then the majority of the herd will be calved outdoors.

Ensuring a high milk yield in dams is crucial to achieving the weight gains necessary to have the calves ready for market, as milk accounts for two thirds of the pre-weaning weight gain in a suckler calf. It is only after 100 days of age that grass accounts for half the calf’s intake.

The herd practises split calving, with 380 cows calving in spring and the other 120 calving in the autumn. The autumn breeding season got underway at Grove Farms on Monday this week, with the stock bull introduced to the cows.

The farm currently runs a team of Simmental and Shorthorn bulls, with all bulls being fertility tested before going to the cows. Charolais provides the terminal breed.

“Once the bull goes to the cows, they’ll be in there for nine weeks. Afterwards, they’re taken out and the cows are scanned at five weeks. First- and second-calvers not in calf – if they have no other issues – will be allowed to slip once into the other herd, but if happens again they’ll be culled. All older cows not in calf are culled,” Raymond explains.

Achieving 24-month calving

In spring, heifers are run with the bulls a month earlier. “By breeding them that bit earlier, it means they can calve earlier. That way they have extra time to come back to the bull, and that’ll help to ensure she doesn’t slip for the next year,” says Raymond.

Heifer management and their age at first calving is one of the main focuses on the farm. All heifers are targeted to calve at 24 months of age, which has been shown to increase profitability on suckler farms, and to do this Grove Farm aims to breed heifers at 15 months of age.

“The biggest problem we have on the farm is ensuring that heifers don’t get over-fat before breeding, especially in autumn calvers. They’ll be on restricted feed from June or July onwards.”

When it comes to calving heifers at 24 months, the crucial thing is to have them at 60% of their mature bodyweight by breeding time, as the onset of puberty and reproductive development is related to weight and not age. At this weight, 90% of animals will be cycling.

For example, if the average cow weight is 650kg, then heifers should weigh a minimum of 390kg at breeding. Given that the calf starts with a birth weight of around 40kg, the animal needs to gain around 350kg of liveweight in 450 days, which is a daily gain of 0.77kg/day from birth.

“We never have any difficulty in terms of conception rates with the heifers or with the spring [calvers] compared to autumn calvers. What we have had [trouble] with, though, is calving difficulty and finding bulls that are easy calvers. At the end of the day we want our heifers to stay in the herd as long as possible, because that way we can maximise the return from them,” says Raymond.

Paying a premium for high health

The other area of the farm where there is a huge focus is in herd health and maintaining the herd’s high health status. All cows on the farm are vaccinated annually against BVD, rotavirus and leptospirosis. Despite the cost of these vaccines Raymond says that it pays in the long term to prevent such diseases entering the herd, rather than treating an outbreak.

The cows are not the only animals on the farm for which preventative measures are taken. For a number of years now the farm has been marketing calves sold at market time as high-health-status animals. Raymond explains: “All calves are vaccinated against blackleg, as we’ve had bad outbreaks in the past, but they’re also vaccinated against pneumonia.”

Selling calves that are vaccinated against pneumonia often means that Raymond can demand a premium price for his stock, as farmers know they are less susceptible to the disease. It is common in young animals, especially in those exposed to stressors like calves at weaning time. In environments such as a sales ring, the incidence and risk drastically increases.