Bale silage from Peter Robertson and Elaine Booth of Ednie farm, came out on top in the 2025 Norgrass silage competition to take the overall crown in the Northern region.
The husband and wife team who farm 1100acres of tenanted ground alongside 300 acres of owned land at Ednie, Saint Fergus, Peterhead, run a mixed farming enterprise based on 160 Aberdeen Angus cross cows and 650-700 acres of arable crop.
“We are very much a mixed farm here, it’s what suits the land when we need arable crops and cattle to sustain the business,” Peter explained.
“We breed our own heifer replacements with stots being sold as forward stores to Elaine’s relative Jim Fowlie at Adziel. Some of the heifers we don’t keep are sold to John Elliot as recipient females for embryo transfer use whilst the rest are sold store through Aberdeen and Northern Marts.”
The arable sector is split between four crops divided equally between winter wheat, winter oats, and spring barley and oats.
“We have the team here to manage it all and we’re currently trying to transition some new talent in the form of an apprentice to hopefully keep things ticking over.
"We have foreman Graham Milne who has been working with us for 35 years, alongside Martin Turriff who works with both the livestock and arable and has been here for 25 years. Andy Norrie works here part-time and our apprentice Daniel Kiselovs,” Peter said.
Efficiency and sustainability go hand in hand at Ednie with the business aiming to become as self-sufficient as possible.
“We do a lot of genetic tagging of the cattle and all the heifers retained for breeding are pelvic scored,” Peter explained.
“We DNA test all our cattle through Neogen and our heifers have to be in the top 50% of the breed if we are to retain them. We buy Aberdeen Angus bulls from John Elliot to improve the herd and we have been trying to select heifers that breed early to tighten up our calving.”
This spring-calving herd has heifers calving at two years of age with bulls running with them for just six weeks.
“Heifers are fed the best quality, first cut silage as the new grass is full of sugar and protein, after that we mop up the rest of the lower quality grass to feed to the cows.” Peter said.
The Robertson’s winning silage sample analysed 499g/kg of dry matter, 11.5MJ/kg DM of ME, 123g/kg DM of crude protein, with an intake factor of 119.
“We are putting down new leys every year using the Danish grass seed, HF11 DLF Trifolium. The standard mix has 3kg of clover but we usually put in 7kg.
“We have a heavy clay soil here so I leave cut grass to wilt for a day and then spread it, by the third day we hopefully have weather to bale it.”
As regular competitors in the Norgrass competition, Peter said the one thing that was done differently this year was wrapping the bales seven times instead of the usual six.
Most of the silage work is done by contractors with machinery via Ringlink. Silage is baled and wrapped using a McHale baler with a wrapper on the back.
“Local contractor Robert Turriff has done our silage for many years and he always cuts in the afternoon which has definitely played a part in this silage win,” Peter said.
“As a business we try and co-operate as much as we can and we aim to use local businesses who employ local people,” Elaine explained. “We currently work with Ringlink, Grainco Scotland, Methlick Fertiliser Group.
Outwith silage work, Ednie has its own drill, combine and grain dryer which is fuelled using home-made woodchip from timber on farm.
“We switched to using woodchips as a way to replace the need for kerosene and we can sell surplus logs as well,” Elaine said.
Robert Turriff bales the straw and crop spraying is outsourced through another Ringlink contractor Scott Grant and his uncle Alan. The grain is used partially for feeding the steers but the majority is sold. Oats are sold for milling, Laureate malting barley is destined for Grainco Scotland with the rest going to distilleries or becoming chicken and/or pig feed.
“We are trying to perfect our cattle system by buying feed efficient bulls, so the progeny meet the same weight on less feed,” Peter said.
“We have been buying bulls from John Elliot as their calves can grow to the same weight on 25% less feed than before so that is a huge saving. Steers are fed a grain mix with a rapeseed meal protein added from Gregor McIntosh of McIntosh Glendaveny.”
Peter likes to stay up to date with technology and machinery.
“We recently got a new Amazone spreader that we use to spread P, K and N. It’s handy as it has an anemometer that automatically alters the speed of the disk in high wind and can sense when ground has already had fertiliser. It can be very windy here at Peterhead so having that technology that can save wasting fertiliser is very useful.”
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Peter also applies both ammonium nitrate and urea for grass and crops.
“We have been able to get away with normal urea but now we are finding with the warmer climate we need to stick to protected urea for the ground,” he said.
“We have been getting our soil mapping and analysis done through Frontier for the last 20 years.
"It’s helpful to know exactly what the pH levels are in each field and how much P and K is required. We also change the type of fertiliser we are using depending on the health of the soil. I use Gardiner ICM at Turriff and get crop recommendations through local agronomist Stuart Milne.
“I always want to apply new tech in a practical way and there’s a balance to be had with putting the right stuff on the soil. I am hoping to be able to reduce urea applications as soil health improves.”
Commenting on the future, Elaine said: “My family has been here for 105 years. I am very glad we have been able to keep it going successfully.
"It’s important to us that we keep the business in a strong position for the generations to come if they so desire to take the helm.”
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