Livestock Farmer Focus FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Are the seasons changing?It has been an interesting year weather-wise. Winter was mild here in the Borders without excessive rain, allowing for good winter crop growth. Spring was damp, which delayed spring sowing,… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: £10 less for stores as they aren’t SuffolksOn 4 August we sold 300 store lambs at Dingwall and Highland Mart’s first lamb sale of 2023. These were our top draw of lambs, and we were happy enough… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Longest wait for straw everI couldn't wait for this lovely weather (5 September) and decided to wrap our first-cut hay a couple of weeks ago while waiting for the straw to dry. I've never… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Silage work was fraught, but we got thereDue to the significant change in weather that happened around the summer solstice, we could refer to this summer, as the "summer of two halves". Considering the drastically dry conditions… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Lush dry cow paddocks need ration tweakCalving is in full swing. We have had 150 calvings so far in week two of our 12-week block-calving period. We had a 74% six-week in-calf rate. We’ve had a… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Let's see how homebred shearlings performThe year seems to be whizzing by and we are now getting everything ready for tupping. We have retained 110 of our 2022-born females, which will be joining the main… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Ammonia reduction better in feed than stores?Ammonia emissions have been a hot topic in the pig industry in recent years. Our family business is exploring how we can reduce any contribution for which we’re responsible in… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Milk price is clearly unsustainableI should know by now that in farming, every time you think you have things under control something appears to cause extra problems. Poor weather at the end of July… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Good shearlings could be north of £200We have just returned from a glorious Denbigh and Flint County Show where the sun shone all day in between what has been a very wet few weeks. Talking to… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: An expensive and tiring harvest is overThis has been the harvest that nearly broke me. Talk about stress: only in farming can you have so much disappointment after so much promise. This year’s harvest had its… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Pleased with summer forage mix at 14p/kg DMBeing a relatively dry farm with free-draining land, we tend to delight in this kind of a summer. Understandably, this is a very unpopular opinion, but feeding only 1kg of… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Only one heifer with cobalt deficiencySince I last wrote, we haven’t had a typical month on the farm, or in our lives. Our daughter was in Ninewells Hospital in Dundee for 11 nights after having… More articles
