Farmer Focus: Work smarter, not harder, is my new year aim

Early January is a time to plan, making to-do lists to ensure everything that needs to be done in the short term will be completed before lambing starts in late February.

The long-term objectives of a new year, new opportunities and possibilities are also considered.

Sometimes, we need to be very critical of our own systems over previous years, to contemplate how we could achieve better results for the future.

See also: Time saving aids upland suckler cow expansion

But, as I grow older, I certainly don’t want to be a slave to the farm, as I used to be in my early years. I want to achieve more, yet retain that work-life balance.

So, working smarter and not harder is my main objective for 2026 and beyond, and being very open to developments in technology that could help us to achieve this.

The new year is also the start of a new era in Welsh farming and the introduction of the new Sustainable Farming Scheme.

It will take some time for us to get our heads around the new structure if we choose to access the new scheme.

As it stands today, it is not perfect, but it has come a long way and evolved over the past five years, thanks to farmers’ unsatisfied response to the initial scheme.

The cattle all came in at the end of November and into December.

After housing, we weighed the calves, trimmed their heads, backs and tails, wormed and deloused them, gave them vitamins and divided them from their mothers.

We were very pleased with the weight gains in the calves this year compared with previous years.

Many weighed well over the 300kg mark and exceeded the target 50% of the dam weight at 200 days.

This year, the youngstock silage pit is a very diverse combination of leys in individual layers, containing arable silage, first- and second-cut grass silage, and a third cut of red clover silage, all contributing various nutrients, energy and high protein.

We do hope that these will provide good growing diets for our youngstock, and we’ll be closely monitoring weight gains over the winter months.

Concentrates are lightly fed, mainly for the calves to familiarise themselves with their taste, so we can easily move the youngstock next summer with a snacker trailer to eliminate stress on both animals and farmer.