Farmer Focus: Open gate causes Christmas morning mayhem

People who know me will know I’d be the first person to extol the virtues of outwintering cattle in a well-managed system.

I take a kind of pride in laying out bales on deferred grass in advance of winter, setting up allocations so that there is the minimum amount of tractor work required.

See also: Young couple transform livestock farm with focus on costs

About the author

Duncan Morrison

Duncan farms owned and tenanted land with his wife, Claire in Aberdeenshire. They run a small Lleyn ewe flock and around 260 Aberdeen Angus and Stabiliser cows and are a QMS Monitor Farm. Operating a low-cost system, stock are outwintered on deferred grass, bale grazing and forage crops.

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However, as a Quality Meat Scotland monitor farmer, I think it is my responsibility to share the negatives as well as the positives.

On Christmas Eve, I somehow managed to leave a gate open, only to find 120 cows wrecking the place, chewing bales and generally causing mayhem on Christmas morning.

Quite an embarrassing error that could so easily have been avoided, and it was made worse by having so many bales laid out in advance. So, it definitely isn’t all plain sailing.

At the beginning of December, we hosted a monitor farm open meeting focused on analysing a variety of forage crop and wintering options.

It was great to see a strong turnout and lots of interest in the systems that we and the other host farmers employ. It highlighted the importance of accurately measuring crop yields so that stock get access to the correct allocations.

Our own kale crop yields ranged from 9.3-15t dry matter (DM)/ha, showing that allocations need to be adjusted to suit, as not every field is the same.

Interestingly, the costs involved with all crops in the comparison ended up very close, so the most important consideration is which crop suits the stock class and situation on farm.

For the first time in a number of years we have had issues with pneumonia in some of the housed stock. It is not something that usually causes problems for us at all, but this year has been different.

I think the unseasonably mild conditions in December would be in large part to blame, though there may be some things we could have done better.

Pedigree bull calves are looking well at this stage. They are outside, still on their mothers on kale, wholecrop and red clover silage.

I’m really looking forward to seeing this cohort develop, as it could be our best crop of bulls yet. We also have a great group of heifers shortlisted for bulling next summer, so the future of the herd is looking bright.