After a bit of a marathon, we finished cutting the spring barley on 10 October.

Hopefully, by the time that you read this, we will have the straw all baled and gathered up from our own barley.

Yield averaged 5.5t per hectare and the straw yield looked good before the weather got to it! Unfortunately, we only have managed to get the straw from our seasonal let secured, the rest, including the straw that we buy from a farm out near the coast is not in a bale yet, never mind home.

Hopefully we will get a break in the weather and get it baled up and home shortly.

Lambs

So far, we have 50 lambs away fat from the grazing rotation. We went through them again last week and another 20 are ready to go away now.

The rest of the lambs that were on the grazing rotation have now been moved on to the stubble turnips and we will go through them and draw the fat ones off regularly until the turnips are all gone.

At that point, those lambs left will go off store to preserve the winter grazing for the ewes.

Winter grazing

The ewe lambs are still on farm at the time of writing but they will be going off to winter grazing before the end of October.

As for the ewes themselves, we are going to go through them shortly and give them all an MOT ahead of tupping.

We recently had the vet out on a routine visit and while they were there, we got them to take blood samples from some of the ewes.

The test results showed that they were fine for vitamin B12 and copper but they were low on iodine and selenium.

In my last update, I mentioned that my neighbour Jim Simmons had trialled bolusing his ewes and seen great results from it.

Between this and the blood test results, we have decided that while we are going through the ewes, we will bolus half of them as a trial this year.

If we get similar results as Jim did over the last couple of years, we will bolus all of the ewes next year.

Breeding

Tups will go in on the 18 of November to give us a start to lambing in the middle of April.

This year, despite the good spring, two days of snow at the peak of lambing hit us really badly, leading to heavy lamb losses.

To counter this, we have started work on a shed for our sheep-handling system to go in to.

Going forward, the intention would be that if significant snow was forecast, we would gather the mules and house them until the snow passed.

Not only would this help the mules, it would also give the blackies more space in the limited cover there is in the lambing fields. So far, we have the legs up and are working on the rest of the shed as and when workload allows.

Autumn-calving herd

The autumn-calving herd is now down to 21 still to calve from the original 47 (at the time of writing). Things didn’t start well, as we lost two calves, with one being early and the other being one of a set of twins.

However, after that, things improved and calving has been fairly good since then.

The dry cows are strip grazing overnight in a good field of grass right behind the sheds and by day, they are going out to a rougher hill park.

Cow and calf at Glenconglass

Cows are in fine condition for calving, as pre-calving we had kept them on a bit of hill land that we are improving.

This both kept condition off the cows and their grazing the rough grasses has let light down in to the bottom of the sward allowing better grasses to begin to appear.

The autumn calves from last year were grazing on a rotation at Glenconglas after weaning. We are weighing them regularly and as they reach 400 kg they will be sold.

Last week, six went off to Thainstone and averaged £2.25/kg at 430kg. Those left will be getting housed shortly and will be fed on a diet of straw, silage, barley and draff to get them to sale weight.

We are lucky with our winter feed in that we have still got access to our usual draff supply this summer.

The last couple of weeks saw us carting home and pitting 260t for the winter.

The hill herd that we have previously discussed is growing and now numbers nine highland cross heifers, all averaging around 18 months of age.

They are currently running along with the replacement heifers for the autumn herd on the hill at Glenconglass.

When the replacements come in and join the rest of the autumn herd to go to the bull, the hill heifers will stay out and be fed silage in rings.

Budgeting

Last December, we went through the initial review process for the programme and the detail showed that while we have good gross margins across our enterprises, we struggle with fixed costs.

This has a major impact on our net profit. We have had a long hard look at the fixed costs and while we could save a few pounds here or there, it will have little significant effect on our profit levels.

Given the good gross margins and a need to control fixed costs, the sensible solution for us is to increase our output.

Autumn cow with calf at foot

Increasing output does not really change the gross margins as the increased costs follow the increased output.

However, a higher output level from the same fixed costs will dilute the fixed costs increasing the net profit in the process.

The aforementioned hill herd is a part of this plan but as the heifers won’t see the bull until next spring, a financial return from them is more than two years away.

Short term, as we have had good silage yields this season and have plenty of our own barley we have bought some weaned calves to grow on through the winter.

We will sell them again in the spring as we don’t currently have the grazing to take them on any further. Last Friday saw 20 bought in Thainstone, averaging 225kg.

They have come home and been given a worm and fluke dose and will join the autumn calves in their shed. They will be fed the same diet to grow them at around 1kg a day.

Read more

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