FARMERFOCUS

11 January 2002




FARMERFOCUS

Chris Knowles

Chris Knowles farms in

partnership with his

parents in the West

Penwith Environmentally

Sensitive Area near St Ives,

Cornwall. The farm consists

of 97ha (240 acres) of

grassland and 45ha

(110 acres) of rough

moor land, stocked with

160 dairy cows, 80

followers and 50 assorted

beef animals

I WAS recently one of four speakers at our local British Grassland Society December meeting.

The evening was entitled Which way forward for milk producers; high yield or low costs?

This was a timely debate, with the recent fall in milk prices reminding us whatever system is followed costs must be controlled. The evening also highlighted the fact that no two farms, systems or producers are the same.

While nearly all cows are dry, it has been time to catch up on some of the annual stock work. The in-calf heifers have been freeze-branded and a contractor used to trim dry cows feet.

We also fitted in a TB test which was supposed to have taken place last March, but was cancelled due to foot-and-mouth. As we had not been tested for nearly two years and there had been TB breakdowns locally, I was relieved when we received the all clear.

The cold weather has been putting my ageing tractors to the test. We run one decent 120hp Massey Ferguson, but this is principally for my brothers contracting business as well as slurry and dung spreading and silaging.

Most farm work is done using an eight-year-old MF 390T and loader, but we have a 30-year-old MF135 and 20-year-old MF590 which, between them, just about manage to do the yard scraping as well as load the fertiliser and sand spreader.

The 135 is addicted to Easy Start and only responds to a precision squirt through the air intake. On particularly cold nights, the other two tractors jostle for position at the top of the run-off slope. It looks like some reinvestment will be needed.

Several producers here in west Cornwall have taken advantage of the good December weather and planted early potatoes, all covered with plastic. With a spring-calving herd, I am choosing to share in their enthusiasm for a kind spring ahead. &#42

Richard Hinchion

Richard Hinchion milks 60

dairy cows and rears 40

replacements on 34ha (83

acres) at Crookstown, west

of Cork city, in southern

Ireland. With a fixed quota

of just over 300,000 litres,

the emphasis is on low-cost

production. Cows yield

6000 litres from 650kg of

concentrate

CHRISTMAS gave us a chance to take things easy with no schools, meetings or milking, just cows to be fed and cubicles/yards to be cleaned.

Plenty of time relaxing, eating, drinking and thinking of the New Year.

This New Year will herald the k across 12 member states, which should level the playing field when comparing prices across the EU. But it will take producers time to become used to selling in k/kg or cents/litre.

Speaking of prices, there are dark clouds looming over 2002 milk prices with predictions as low as UK 16.6p/litre. This does not give people something to cheer about.

On a brighter note, the weather during December has been fabulous, like an Indian summer. I hope we wont pay for this in March/April when we will want cows to eat 12-15kgDM of grass.

My 20, 10-month-old, bullocks are doing well on the wintering plot on silage and 1kg of beef meal. As the weather is mild, I think I will leave them out instead of housing them.

We spread cattle slurry at 22,700 litres/ha (9080 litres/acre) on 2.4ha (6 acres) of silage ground before Christmas, while the weather was good. We also soil sampled 70% of the home farm to see if we could save money on phosphorus and potash in 2002 and are waiting for results.

We have received silage analysis results. I was rather disappointed by the low dry matters of both cuts (see table). But we should have enough silage to last us until the end of April.

Disturbing my break, my automatic scraper system was not so automatic on Christmas Day, so we had to switch it off until I repaired it two days later. Now its fingers crossed that it stays okay.

If the weather remains good, we will consider spreading urea on 50% of the farm and slurry on the rest before the calving season commences. &#42

Silage analysis results

1st cut 2nd cut

Protein 13.9% 13.9%

D-value 74.1% 75.1%

Dry matter 17.9% 22.4%

ME (MJ/kg) 10.7 10.8

pH 4.0 3.7

Dennis Bridgeford

Dennis Bridgeford farms

50ha (125 acres) at Petley

Farm in Easter Ross, north

of Inverness. The farm

comprises a 480-sow

indoor unit producing 95kg

pigs for one outlet and

85kg pigs for a local

abattoir. A further 320

sows are run outdoors

CHRISTMAS has come and gone with the price of pigs dropping as normal.

What 2002 holds for the pig industry is hard to predict, but a period of stability with prices over £1/kg would help.

With the introduction of the k in most European countries, you cannot help feeling we are lagging behind. Joining the k would help with stability and take at least the currency advantage away from our competitors.

Every year I try to organise myself for the holiday period and every year I fail. Boxing Day started with frozen pipes, then one of the mills broke down. One area we did manage to organise was the movement of pigs. Demand was there and it was pretty obvious prices were going to plunge.

All things must end and I regret that this is to be my final column. Over the years it has been very enjoyable. The comments, phone calls and invitations to discussion groups have all been enlightening with the benefit of not only meeting new people, but also picking up new methods.

If I have one regret, even though I kept going on and on, it looks as though the Border area will not be wide enough to stop PMWS coming to Scotland. This is tragic because it was preventable.

The future of the pig industry is still in the balance. Quality assurance schemes have arrived, without any extra income. The outgoers scheme has come and gone and there have been dramatic changes in the slaughter industry, with more to come.

Politicians with hidden agendas keep coming up with ideas to make life harder and, for good measure, the retail trade thinks we have a magic wand.

But the most worrying aspect is going to be attracting our family into an industry that means you work harder every year for lower returns. For me, this is just round the corner. My eldest son borrowed my kilt, jacket and shoes for his school dance and the youngest has started telling me what we should or should not be doing. But if I can cope with the problems of the British pig industry, I can cope with them. &#42

Stephen Morris

Steve Morris farms in the

Forest of Bowland, Lancs,

in partnership with his wife

Valerie. Over half of the

190ha (470-acre) LFA farm

is heather fell, with a

further 20ha (50 acres) of

rough grazing. It is stocked

with 50 dairy cows, 280

Lonk ewes, 100 half-breds

and 40 gimmer hoggs

SANTA was busy this Christmas – my son Christopher received a go kart and daughter Sian, a model kitchen.

Valerie was the lucky recipient of a garment which can be broadly described at nightwear, but sadly I was less fortunate.

Christmas morning dawned to reveal a burnt out Fiat parked in a newly demolished section of fell wall. After locating the chassis number, the owner has been traced and I am hoping our insurance company will sort out the rest.

For the past two decades, the New Year saw us beginning daily trips to the fell to feed ewes with silage and, as lambing approached, with ewe rolls and liquid feed. This would take place until point of lambing when they would return to the pasture next to the house.

But this year ewes will be housed in a new lambing shed which has been financed in part by a package put together by Bowland Initiative. The Forest of Bowland was one of two upland areas – along with Bodmin in Cornwall – designated by MAFF as pilot experiments to address intensification in upland environments and rural economy decline.

The project was largely funded by Objective 5b and Countryside Stewardship funds. But in our case, the 5b money could not be used as the farmyard lies 182m (200 yards) outside the 5b area even though the fell lies within.

Here I should pay tribute to John Hickling of English Nature for his resolve in seeing that our own project did not fall by the wayside. Also Margaret OKane seconded to Bowland Initiative from FWAG deserves credit for putting together a stewardship package which allows some recompense for the extra costs of feeding ewes indoors.

Because the previous feeding regime did not allow us to manage ewes in groups, we did not bother to scan hill ewes. Now we shall scan and feed accordingly.

The trail up the fell used to take a couple of hours each day including bagging feed and refilling liquid feed tanks. This was a brutal task for our loader tractor and is a job I shall not miss. &#42


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