Farmer Focus: Mixed support for Morrison’s milk brand

I can’t believe we are well into October and the Indian summer continues. I took part in a Radio Scotland programme about Morrison’s launch of the ‘Milk for Farmers’ brand, which has received mixed support from farmers and consumers.

It has been an eye-opener how many consumers just don’t care, which shows how little education on food production they had at school.

Shortly after the telephone interview I had a teleconference with the NFU Scotland board to discuss the Scottish government’s handling of our SFP situation. They need to come clean on how bad it is.

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We will continue to push for at least 60% of the money to be in our accounts in December, but the question is: 60% of what? Until you know the final figure it seems nothing can happen.

On the positive side, I have been calculating figures of our zero-grazing adventure this summer. We started cutting on 11 March with a front mower and forage wagon until our zero grazer arrived on 30 March.

The first round of grass was ungrazed winter grass, which was fed to the lower-yielding cows. The second round was fed to cows yielding less than 35 litres. Grass intakes across the herd would be about 5.5kg DM a head, with cows yielding 20-25 litres receiving 12kg.

The biggest issue when zero grazing is mindset, because we have always believed every cubicle should produce a minimum of 30 litres. The question is whether we are grazers or intensive feeders. I think we swing both ways.

Last year we purchased £195,000 less feed from April to September which, when converted to this year’s prices, is about £160,000.

We also fed £40,000 less in forage as silage or wholecrop, which is costed at £1/t DM. The end result was we produced 380,000 litres less milk, but our protein moved from 3.2% to 3.33% (average) and fat from 3.75% to 3.89%.

Although 80ha of grass was used, in reality 60ha would have been enough as silage was taken off 20ha three times.

This year we will continue cutting until 10 November. I see grass having a big future in our system regardless of milk price.

Gary Mitchell milks 800 cows, with heifers reared on a local farm. Gary zero grazes 80ha of the 195ha he owns. He is regional board chairman for NFU Scotland.