Changing season a time to plan for an unknown future
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
This is a column by our agricultural correspondent Victoria Ballantyne, of Clynelish Farm.
This time of year always comes with an air of both relief and anticipation. Though farming is very much a rolling and repetitive timeline, for us it is a time of year when we close the chapter on one year and start going through the motions to ensure we have something to show for next year.
Our end of financial year is September 30, so there is a lot of paperwork to be tied up and finalised before being sent to the accountant. In the age of digital tax and real time reporting, getting it right and making sure everything is properly squared away is a big job.
All our cattle and sheep numbers need to add up and although all the sheep are individually electronically tagged and we count every animal on and off the farm with an electronic tag reader, there is inevitably a discrepancy somewhere that seems to take hours to find!
We will wean our calves in a few weeks. They were born throughout May and June and will be an average of five months old. Last year they averaged just over 230kg/calf so we will be hoping for something similar this year.
We don’t feed any concentrate (or manufactured) feed to our cows or calves and our records show that this doesn’t have any impact of the average weights when we sell them in the spring. They seem to catch up once they come into the sheds.
Weaning is always a very noisy time, and we continue to try weaning methods that make it less stressful for man and beast. This year we are leaving a grass field ungrazed next to a rougher wintering area. We’ll install a gate or electric wire that allows the calves through to the grass but not the cows and hope they get used to spending more time away from their mothers.
All the ewes have been sorted and are enjoying some down time, putting on condition in the lead up to tupping and winter. We don’t join them with the rams until the end of November, however we will give them a worm dose and mineral bolus in a few weeks.
The grass doesn’t have the same nutrition in the winter and those that become pregnant with twins or triplets particularly will need a bit extra. The bolus last six months and will see them through until the super nutritious spring grass arrives.
As with much of the year, it is an important time to balance the demands of the different animals. To ensure we will still have enough grass for the ewes in November and December, we are calculating expected grass growth and carefully planning what fields the cows can have and for how long.
Although the weather has been fairly mild the ground underneath is actually very dry and has been for much of the year, so this has held growth back a bit.
The uncertainty of Brexit continues to loom over us. Like all businesses, the not knowing is the real challenge as it affects how we plan. The farming industry continues to put pressure on Westminster over a proposed USA trade deal that will see food of unknown quality come into the country.
Thankfully the British public has so far shown that they do care about rural economies, the quality of their food and the way the food they eat is produced. I’m eternally optimistic that is these times of social change, we will continue to value the one thing we cannot do without.
