Farmer Focus: New land tender brings clover opportunities

Big news – we were successful in another farm tender, taking on an additional 202ha (500 acres) of good quality Grade 2 arable ground, which has pushed us up to 790ha (1,950 acres) of arable now.

We took it on without additional machinery purchases. Fixed costs have crept up a bit overall, but by putting those costs across more acres we have made ourselves a lot more efficient.

We plan to put 81ha (200 acres) of the worst arable land into red clover leys and lucerne.

See also: 17 ways sheep farmers can work towards net zero

About the author

Rob and Jo Hodgkins

Livestock Farmer Focus writer

Rob and Jo Hodgkins run 2,300 ewes across 210ha of grass and have 566ha of arable in Hertfordshire, producing lambs for Tesco and breeding sheep through Kaiapoi Romneys. Subsidy-free sheep farming means ewes must be functional, lamb outdoors and produce lambs on forage alone.

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The hope is to get a deep-rooting, drought-tolerant, low-input crop that can help us get lambs away that bit sooner and catch the earlier market.

While drought has now finished in the South East, we are still seeing less rain than normal. Grass covers are slowing down again and cover crop growth is slightly slower than normal. 

Ewes have bounced back in condition very well. We have a group of about 150 that are looking a bit lean, but I am confident we can turn them around in time for tupping.

The sheep scanned at 175% last year and I reckon we will be down at least 10% purely on ewe condition. Hopefully we can claw back 1-2% on where I thought we would be in August.

Our 300 milking sheep are in very good nick. Last year the milking sheep scanned at 200%, so even if they’re down a bit there will still be plenty of lambs.

The lambs suffered a bit of a hangover, and it will be another three to four weeks before we get a draw big enough to warrant sending a lorry down.

We will also not be able to tup quite as many ewe lambs as we usually do, so flock expansion may be pushed back a year.

Dryish weather is giving us confidence to delay drilling for blackgrass control. We have started on the heavier ground this week but currently are not in a massive rush. We will be strip-tilling everything this year with the Mzuri.

The only cloud on the horizon is 45ha (111 acres) of quinoa that still is not ready for harvest.

At this point it looks like I will be having Christmas dinner in the combine cab. It’s to be followed by winter wheat, so it will have a knock-on effect soon.