Moving from sheep to low input sucklers

Reno and Nic Renison’s farm at Cannerheugh in Cumbria is remarkably dry for being in the uplands.

It is mostly sandy loam soils around the farmyard which makes for good quality farmland despite running from 850 feet to 1,200 feet above sea level.

The weather is more aligned to a typical hill farm though, with around 1,200mm of rain falling annually and the area is known for a strong, cold, north-easterly wind called “Helm Wind”.

The 350-acre farm, which is located on the edge of the Pennines in the north of England, was purchased by Reno and Nic in 2012.

The couple started out on a traditional upland system, with Swaledale and Mule ewes running on the farm.

The breeding policy changed after a few years with Aberfield and Lleyn genetics brought in to support a lower input system where most lambs were sold as stores.

Rotational grazing

By 2014, Reno and Nic started taking rotational grazing more seriously. They began subdividing fields and giving stock regular moves.

The ability to grow more grass soon became apparent when their new approach was compared to the old set stocking system.

The couple have continuously developed their grazing system over the years and have cut out all chemical inputs, including fertilisers and sprays.

They now run a regenerative style system, where the grazing rotation is much longer than a conventional 21-day round. It means livestock are going into heavy grass covers and paddocks are rested for long periods.

Suckler switch

The other big change in recent years is all the sheep have gone. At their peak, there were 1,200 ewes on the farm, but they have now been replaced with an 80-cow suckler herd.

There seems to be various reasons behind the switch from sheep to sucklers.

A key factor is that the grazing behaviour of cattle is better suited to long grazing rotations.

Sheep graze grass covers much lower than the Renisons would like, plus cattle are better at “trampling” ungrazed grass which is something they want to happen to help build soil organic matter.

There tend to be fewer veterinary medicine inputs with cattle and therefore fewer interventions. Handling over 1,000 ewes plus their lambs when a blanket treatment was due was a lot of work, Reno said.

There were also some bad experiences with snowstorms over the years which probably contributed to the move towards sucklers.This includes the “Beast from the East” in 2018 when 100 ewes were lost in snow drifts on the farm.

Grass genetics

Cattle on the farm are Aberdeen Angus bred and stock bulls are only bought from breeders that have grass-based systems with no supplementary concentrates.

Reno said the aim is to have a relatively small cow that is easily wintered, calves down unassisted, and rears a calf with minimal inputs.

At present, most calves are kept over the winter and are sold at the end of their second summer as stores at 17 to 18 months of age.

For a lot of the grazing season, all cattle on the farm are grazed as one big group which runs into almost 250 head.

Cattle are moved every 24 hours, and sometimes every 12 hours. The mob is going into heavy grass covers and leaving a high residual cover behind.

Last year, the average grazing rotation was 89 days. Grass supplies were tighter this year which meant the average rotation was slightly shorter at 68 days.

Extended grazing

When the Irish Farmers Journal visited the farm in early October, all cows, calves and followers were being grazed in a single group on hill land at the top of the farm.

The 100-acre hill had been split into four blocks. The cattle had been moved the day before and, whilst the current block had a strong cover of grass, the previous block had clearly been well grazed out.

Reno explained this ground had not had cattle on it since this time last year, so it had a long time to recover.

Each block has a batch of round hay bales in the corner with an electric fence around them.

A bale is rolled out on the ground every day as a supplementary feed to help extend the grazing time in each block.

The plan is to move the cattle back to fields around the farmyard after they come off the hill when there will be one more rotation in a “bale grazing system”.

This is where hay bales are set throughout the field beforehand and then batches of cattle are allocated a bale and small area of grass each day with an electric fence.

Planting hedgerows and trees to sub divide fields and create shelter belts has been a key focus for Reno and Nic Renison since they bought their farm in 2012.

The couple have been actively involved in agri environment programmes over the years and have taken up new schemes which have been rolled out since Brexit.

Farm support is changing significantly in England with the Basic Payment Scheme being phased out and replaced with new schemes that are mainly focused on delivering environmental measures.

The Renisons are part of the new Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI). Measures that they are carrying out include direct drilling multispecies swards, also known as herbal leys, and wood pasture creation where 1,100 trees have been planted through a 100-acre block of land.

When compared to other upland farmers in England, they appear less concerned about the changes to payments and a potential loss of income.

Nic said that the requirement to deliver environmental measures helps justify farm support to taxpayers and should lead to environmental improvements in the countryside.

“We have got to deliver something for that money, especially when you look at the state of hospitals and other areas where government money is needed,” she said.

The Renisons have 550 free range hens that are moved round the grazing block in two mobile laying units.

The units are moved every three days, which means no area of grassland is damaged by prolonged use and there is a low level of nutrient input from bird droppings.

An electric fence is put up as a perimeter after each move to stop the hens straying too far and eggs are collected each day from the mobile units.

In terms of bird nutrition, around 20% of the diet comes from the pasture and the remainder is a bought in feed which is soya and palm oil free.

Once a week, eggs are delivered to a list of customers, which is mainly local cafes and restaurants. Every fortnight, an “egg club” is held where members of the public come to the farm to collect their own eggs, with the minimal purchase being a tray of 30 eggs.

Overall, Reno estimates that the poultry enterprise equates to an average of two hours work each day, which includes moving the units, plus collecting and delivering eggs.

Like many hill farms across the UK and Ireland that have dry soils, bracken is a problem in parts of the Renison’s farm.

Their approach to bracken control involves trampling the plant with a large group of cattle. This damages the bracken and gives grass and other plants an opportunity to break through. Hay or salt licks are offered to cattle in early summer which encourages them to congregate in in areas of thick bracken.

“Don’t starve them when you are doing it. You don’t want them to eat the bracken because it will put cows off milk and can be poisonous,” Reno said. He said the system has worked on the farm and pointed out clean areas of hill land where bracken was once rife. “You need a big group of cattle for it to work. There wouldn’t be enough trampling if you just had sheep,” Reno said.