Farmer Focus Livestock:Iain Green

Q September has certainly been eventful. With more than 115mm of rain falling within 36 hours, our cereal fields would have been more suited for growing rice. This has caused major problems for farmers in our area, with standing cropping and straw in bouts being lost. This inevitably will affect straw prices.

Luckily we still had dual wheels for our combine, allowing it to travel across most of the fields. The same cannot be said for the grain trailers. Although on large floatation tyres, one loaded trailer still required three 190hp tractors to retrieve it.

One group of pedigree spring-born calves and their mothers had a lucky escape when the River Spey burst flood their field up to four feet deep. Thankfully they found a high spot next to the gate before being moved.

After the heavy rain, strong winds spread all the unbaled straw evenly across the fields and with one stockman on his honeymoon, one on holiday and one off ill, we have all been stretched to our limits.

We have entered nine bulls and five heifers for the Perth Bull Sales, which will be held at the new Stirling Agricultural Centre next month. Hopefully, the recent cattle price will follow through and reward us for the hard work and expense involved in breeding pedigree cattle.

I decided to benefit from the increased prices in the sheep sector and selected several Texel cross Mule ewe lambs from our batch of weaned lambs and sold them at our local auction mart to average £70 a head.

As harvest comes to an end, the feed barley price is coming under increasing pressure, but this will help the pig enterprise, as the only major processor in Scotland is determined to drive the pigmeat price down. It does annoy me to think what the pig industry has gone through in the last two years, and yet we are seeing importation of German pigmeat into Scotland.