Farmer Focus: Some breeders still divorced from reality
© Kathy Horniblow The last load of hopper-fed lambs have gone to mart. They were really good quality but made the least money in two years, at just under £100 a head banked.
I got a lot of strange looks from the auctioneer and buyers after explaining what lovely heads the lambs had.
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I might have been being flippant, but I was trying to make a point.
It saddens me greatly that sections of the pedigree world are more divorced than ever from the commercial farmer and the impending reality of market forces.
Recently, one ram even had the quality of his tear ducts advertised in a catalogue.
On our farm, we have concentrated on commercial attributes in our pedigree breeding, resulting in some healthy financial figures.
While on the topic of the stark realities of commercial farming, we had some rain (writing this on 5 September). Yes! We had 5mm on 15 August.
It proved to be a false dawn, as hot winds followed and burned any remaining grass off.
As a result of this, we are feeding all the sheep and have been for several weeks.
We harvested a great crop of maize on 31 August (46t/ha). We hope that, with good cob fill, it should be some excellent feed.
We will find out straight away as we have housed 650 lambs to give some grass a chance to recover. Hopefully, with rain forecast this week, by the time you read this we will have some green reappearing.
The maize stubble was heavily cracked, but had 2cm of fluffy soil on the surface. A friend’s disc/air drill combo has got the grass/clover seed in, and after heavy rolling it has produced an acceptable finish, given the year.
The kale stubble is completely different, with rock solid “cobbles” way off getting a seed-bed. I can only hope it softens up quickly for the remaining reseeds.
We have bought 3t of extremely expensive energy licks for the ewes. Hay is OK, but to look after their ovaries and follicular waves, they need energy. Scanning day will reveal the value of the investment.
Now our glorious new leader has been announced, I expect everything to be rosy, or is that me being stupid again?