Historically, all male calves not required for breeding have been intensively finished using home-grown cereals. This year will see us step away from that with all surplus male calves castrated.

Our barley area has been reduced and replaced with forage crops which we hope will see the calves through the winter along with silage, while cutting labour and straw costs. Fodder beet, swedes and forage rape have been grown and all classes of livestock will be strip-grazed across the fields throughout the winter. I am always looking at ways to improve profitability. Changing our wintering system is a major step for us, and hopefully it will pay off as support payments come under increasing pressure we need to do all we can to ensure we make a profit.

Brexit

Brexit could be a catalyst our industry needs to make sure we are fit for the challenges that it brings while being ready to make the most of the opportunities.

One of the main challenges we face is finding good staff, so when we do find a good person we want to keep them by continually improving the working environment. Key to that is farming systems which are simple and enjoyable to work in.

There are 240 cows in total, 70 purebred beef Shorthorns and 70 crossbred on the home unit and on the four satellite farms there are Luing cattle, which are a Shorthorn Highland cross.

The Luing breed is the ideal hill cow. It forages for grass that other cattle prefer not to and we find they are ideal for helping us break in ground and pasture that has been managed in a different style to ours.

Increased numbers

Ewe numbers have increased from 1,400 to 4,200 in just four years. The hill cheviots are kept on the farm in Sutherland while Aberfield cross and purebred Aberfield, Texel, NZ Suffolk and Texel ewes are used in Easter Ross. We sell 200 shearling rams on farm each year for an average of £700 each usually, but we use them for mating as ram lambs first in order to keep the cost of stock rams down. This week is the Black Isle show and we’re supplying 350 lambs for shearing at that and are showing Beltex.

We have started cutting winter barley and hope to finish at the weekend. This area is well known for producing high-quality malting barley and we are proud to produce this for the Scottish whiskey industry.

It’s not cut yet but it would normally yield 2.8t/ac to 2.9t/ac. If we don’t get sun soon to fill the grain we may struggle to hit that this year. The biomass boiler on farm uses about 60t of woodchip per year, it not only heats the houses but also dries grain.