Farmer Focus: Butterfats and crossbred calf trade lift income
Colin Murdoch © Jeff Holmes It was great to be finished harvest up here before we’d reached the last week in August, even with combining spring wheat.
I’m pleased to say we have the pleasant problem of not having enough room to get all the straw into the shed.
Once it’s through our straw chopper, the spring wheat straw looks like a lovely addition to our ration.
See also: How to minimise milk fat depression
About the author
Interestingly, since we introduced the caustic wheat into the diet about two weeks ago, butterfat has risen from 5.9% to 6.4%, while yields have remained the same.
This represents a chunky and welcome addition to our milk price, so hopefully we can keep it up.
We’ve managed to continue to zero graze through a very wet first few weeks of September, albeit in a field that was due to get ploughed anyway.
We’ve got a lot of grass at the moment, but I live in hope that we’ll manage to get most of it into the cows before it becomes too wet.
I’ve resisted temptation to cut silage again as I think we’ve plenty, so heifers will get any surplus.
The weather has played ball for the past week and 24ha (60acres) of winter cereals are now in the ground along with 12ha (30acres) of reseeding completed.
We repaired quite a few drains post harvest, though I still managed to find a couple we’d missed when ploughing; thank goodness for a long chain.
All youngstock continue to graze outside and will hopefully do so for a few weeks yet.
Prior to turnout, they had a mineral bolus plus long-acting wormer injection, and have certainly done well with the combination, plenty of grass and just about enough sunshine.
We have also had Angus bulls with heifers this summer and it’s pleasing to see that market trade for these crossbred calves is so strong.
We’ve decided to sell them at this stage to make sure we can concentrate on giving the dairy replacements plenty of space.
We had a lovely weekend in Yorkshire visiting friends. I’d entered Jack to run in the school fundraiser 2k race with our friends’ children. I had to accompany him as he was too young to go it alone.
I’m hoping that by the time you read this, my legs, and lungs, have recovered!