Farmer Focus: New forage in the mix

I am writing this month’s article having survived Valentine’s Day, even though I forgot to get Mrs W a card.

I also managed to avoid going to the cinema to see a film that appears to be all about Murray Greys… Kirsty and I have been together for 21 years now, yet she still seems unconvinced about my idea that she’s a lucky girl.

Read more from our other livestock Farmer Focus writers 

I have spent a fair bit of time with our agronomist recently, planning what we are going to grow for the next few years to ensure we have a nice balance of home-grown protein and starch while fulfilling the “greening” part of our single farm payment.

We already grow red clover and lucerne, so have decided to up our maize silage area by 50% and also grow some triticale, undersown with ryegrass and white clover to give us more variety in our forages.  

I am also keen to try some beans/peas as I saw some amazing wholecrop, including these two legumes, while on a visit to Bainbridge Farms, situated on Hadrian’s Wall. The mix with triticale looked amazing and was a really nice, balanced feed for Simon Bainbridge’s bulls. I think we will try 4ha next spring as we have some grass leys that will need refreshing.

We are three weeks away from starting calving and I am much happier with the condition of our spring-calving group. As I mentioned before, they came in during November and were probably half a condition score too high, but a ration of decent hay and mineral buckets has got them in much better shape to calve.

They will go out the moment we get some heat/soil temperature as the grass hasn’t started growing yet here. Underfoot conditions are good as we have had very little rain for a few weeks. We have served a nice group of heifers to calve in September and this mob could also do with going out as soon as possible.

I have really enjoyed some great speaking engagements in the past month. The highlight was presenting a paper at the British Cattle Breeders’ Club conference on starting from scratch in farming. It was well received and I was chuffed with the enthusiasm I got from the audience.

I also spoke to a local discussion club last Friday night, at the same time as the England v Wales rugby match. I can only assume there was a problem with mobile signal in Wales after half time as all the abusive texts I was receiving from my Welsh friends seemed to stop as my talk and the second half started.

Paul Westaway farms in partnership with his wife Kirsty on a 69ha Gloucester County Council farm, running more than 220 Angus and Holstein cattle. The pair also run an AI business and have recently launched an online steak and wine shop.