FARMERFOCUS

2 October 1998

FARMERFOCUS

John Martin

John Martin farms in

partnership with his parents

on the Ards Peninsula 15

miles south of Belfast. The

65ha (160-acre) Gordonall

farm and 16ha (40 acres) of

rented land carry 400

Suffolk x Cheviot ewes, a

small flock of Suffolks and

40 spring calving sucklers.

About 20ha (50 acres) of

barley is grown for feed and

for sale

IT looks like the four horsemen of the Apocalypse have got some serious competition, in the form of John Kettley, Michael Fish, Rob McElwee and Bernard Davey. Like many other people, I hold them directly responsible for the miserable weather this summer.

Believe it or not, despite the nearly continuous rainfall we managed to make about 400 bales of material that was almost hay. Another 24 hours would have made all the difference, but that was a luxury we just couldnt afford. Still, ewes and lambs will be very glad of it in spring.

We also managed to harvest our 20 acres of spring barley around the middle of September. Moisture content varied from 19% to 26%, but I would estimate the average to be about 22%.

The barley yield was good at around 3t/acre, and grain was blown into our moist grain store. Straw was baled in large and small square bales. These will be used for our own livestock, even though straw and forage prices remain strong with some cattle in the north of the province housed since mid-July.

We have no cattle inside yet, but that could change at any time as we may soon house the few beef bullocks and in-calf beef heifers.

Spring born calves will have their pneumonia vaccine programme completed by early October and can be weaned and housed after that. Calves are generally looking well, considering the difficult conditions. But we can see the few who havent yet started to eat creep meal.

Turning to sheep, our lambs have started to thrive again after the check, due to poor weather. A little bit of rolled barley seems to have helped as well. We now have a flush of lambs finishing – just as the price has fallen to its lowest level all year. It appears that some buyers are trying to talk the price down on the back of the Russian crisis, and the local lamb marketing group has refused to send any stock to the nominated processor at the price they were quoting.

Of course, the recent outbreak of Foot-In-Mouth disease among the scientific community, regarding the safety of sheep meat, has led to consumer concerns and falling demand for lamb, serving only to compound the problem. &#42

Louis Baugh

Louis Baugh and his wife

farm 186ha (460 acres) at

Neatishead Hall and 91ha

(225 acres) at Beech Farm

near Norwich in Norfolk.

About 100 autumn calving

Holstein Friesian cows and

followers are grazed on

Broads ESA marshes with

forage from Italian ryegrass

and maize

TIME has sped by as we worked to complete potato lifting on Sept 14; the harvester now moves off to contract lift another 90 acres.

Since then, we have been catching up on the livestock jobs put to one side while potato lifting. Youngstock have been moved to mop up the flush of grass we have resulting from August rain.

One piece of rested marsh is being re-grazed and the cattle closely watched; it is a marsh we took on two years ago and gave us a new problem earlier in the season. We occasionally get the odd case of foul lameness, but in this case we had swelling on all four feet and duly diagnosed our first case of Mud Fever.

After a long run of year-on-year dairy costings showing a decline in margins, last month we reversed the trend with our margin a litre increasing on the same month of 1997, despite a 2p/litre milk price differential. At long last the effects of cheaper feeds and efficiencies made are coming through. Now comes the acid test, can we turn a one-off into a trend?

One cost cutting exercise we have decided upon is to drop Crestar synchronisation of bulling heifers. We will reduce stocking rate in the bulling yards and use Kamar heat detectors. Philip, our herdsman, will serve heifers to heat, saving the cost of batch services by the inseminator.

I was asked to attend a meeting organised by a neighbour with NFU deputy president, Tim Bennett, and a handful of dairy farmers. Sitting around a table we gave our views and concerns about milk marketing, quotas, calf slaughter scheme, modulation and Agenda 2000 to name but a few.

In return the deputy president informed us of likely developments both national and European, painting the bigger picture of events likely to affect the dairy industry.

All present felt the exercise worthwhile. The hour-and-a-half passed rapidly, before Tim Bennett moved on to meet a group of Norfolk pig farmers.

Finally, have the lunatics taken over the asylum? A recent inspection of our two let poultry houses by a supermarket buyer resulted in their rejection of them on the grounds of the close proximity of cattle. Laughable, apart from the loss of much needed income. &#42

OM BAUGH

Kevin Daniel

Kevin Daniel has a mixed

lowland holding near

Launceston, Cornwall. The

65ha (160 acres) farm and

20ha (50 acres) of rented

ground supports 70

Simmental cross suckler

cows, 380 Border Leicester

cross Suffolk ewes and has

28ha (70 acres) of arable

THIS autumn has seen a change in policy for the sheep enterprise. For the past 30 years at Trebursye, all replacements have been home bred with rams being the only purchased animals joining the flock.

This policy has been adopted in the belief that homebred sheep should minimise the risk of bringing in any undesirable disease and they should be immune to diseases already on the farm. Flock replacement costs have been kept low as homebred lambs are only valued at slaughter price.

The flock has been developed by using a reciprocal breeding strategy, using Suffolk and Border Leicester rams. Suffolk rams have been run with white faced ewes and Border Leicester rams mated to black faced ewes.

This produces a large ewe which has consistently lambed at between 180 and 200%. Three years ago, my wife Jacquie threatened not to lamb another sheep unless we started to breed them smaller. With the majority of ewes around 80-85kg, I had to agree with her. We began to use Lleyn rams in place of the Border Leicester rams in an attempt to reduce ewe size while maintaining prolificacy and milk.

Progress after three years has been slow, as we have realised that we need to use a Lleyn ram twice to produce a three-quarter Lleyn ewe to improve milkiness. So we have decided to short circuit the quest to breed perfect ewes, by buying some replacements. After numerous discussions with farmers, shepherds and breed societies, all of which seemed to have a different opinion, we have decided to try both Lleyns and North Country Mules.

First to arrive on farm in July were 22 purebred Lleyn ewe lambs and 23 Lleyn cross Texel ewe lambs from a breeder in Somerset. We also bought 30 Mule ewe lambs at the association sale at Kirkby Stephen in September.

All lambs have since been shorn, vaccinated with Heptavac P, Toxovax and Enzovax and are going to the ram at the end of October.

It will be very interesting to see how the various crosses perform at lambing next year. Individual tagging of lambs and accurate recording will be essential to enable us to follow lambs right through to slaughter. Watch this space! &#42

John Glover

John Glover currently milks

65 cows plus followers on a

40ha (100-acre) county

council holding near

Lutterworth, Leicestershire,

having recently moved from

another 20ha (51-acre)

county council farm

DEADLINES always seem to creep up on you, even though you think there is plenty of time. Most jobs now have deadlines attached, articles for farmers weekly, calf registrations, CID applications, cow events, getting them back into calf, drying off, IACS, VAT returns. Most of these can be met fairly easily, but these days paper work cannot be left for a wet day.

There is a deadline approaching that I am not sure we will be ready for – winter. We are still waiting on a new building for winter housing our dairy cows.

Although nothing is happening on the ground, the building is ordered and a few days work will clear and stone the site. But erection of the building is not due to start until late November.

The site is between the feeding area and maize clamp, so to make room the straw bale clamp wall will be moved – making our maize clamp smaller than desired. The feeding area for cows will also be compromised and divided with temporary electric fencing.

We have designed the unit with a bedded area of 6750ft sq, 75ft sq each for dairy cow, including dry cows and in calf heifers. At present we have 3600ft sq. However we have increased cow numbers this year, so by the new quota year, when all heifers will calve, we will have 90 cows in-milk.

The other building on the farm is a six-bay barn, 55ft by 90ft, enclosed down each side and at one end. A row of stanchions splits it in two – the original 30ft barn and a 25ft lean-to for general storage. At present, we have over 40 miscellaneous youngstock to house in this building and the main bulk of cows and heifers due to calve after Christmas.

One good thing, is that we have finally used all the silage left by the previous tenant, so youngstock which it had been fed to were turned out in early September. It looks like they will have to stop out there until Christmas, as their building will be used as over-spill housing for milking cows. &#42