Farmer Focus: Straw down by a third this harvest

Harvest has started and, for the first time in many years, I won’t be driving a tractor due to daughter Aggie demanding to be with me. However, so far so good.

The lads all had their tractor and trailer safety awareness so we are all fully trained and ready for another year of gathering bales in.

Early signs show there is about a third less straw this year compared with last but hopefully, we should still be OK for the year.

We are now waiting for the new crops to come into the feed mill and then it’s all about making sure we feed it correctly.

See also: Read more from our Livestock Farmer Focus writers

New cereals can be hard for the pigs to digest and can cause a scour as they tend to be richer in sugar, we introduce an enzyme to try and counter this but we still have to try and wait a few weeks before using new crop and also mix it with last year’s grain.

My sister and I once again talked at the Great Yorkshire Show. This was our second year of trying to inform people about “a day in a life of a pig farmer”.

This is an initiative the Yorkshire Agricultural Society wants to expand.

The show is an ideal time to get a wide range of consumers together and try and give them a little bit more knowledge about pig farming to try and help them make an informed decision when buying pork.

I think we can say all those who listened were amazed at the amount of technology we use and how different it was to what they imagined a pig farm to be.

Hopefully, this will continue to grow and include other sectors. Anything we can do to show people what we do has to be worth it.

Kate Morgan and family farm 1,700 sows indoors in East Yorkshire and 1,200 outdoor in North Yorkshire, taking all the progeny through to slaughter. Follow Kate Morgan on Twitter or katemorgan25@hotmail.com.