September has provided us with some much needed autumn sunshine, enabling us to bring in the harvest with relative ease and despite a few damp mornings, it was still in the shed in good time. All straw is also baled, ready for bedding and feed.

Third cut silage was completed at the end of August and with the favourable weather conditions since has produced a good crop of aftermath.

We have been selling lambs on a weekly basis through Forfar mart and are delighted with the trade. It is still strange not to get in to see them sold, however this has become the new norm.

Our lambs were not finishing as quickly or as well as we had hoped during the wet spell but thankfully with the sun on their back and plentiful grass fields, they seem to be thriving again especially now that we have introduced a hopper of feed barley to get them away quicker. They will shortly be moved onto stubble turnips and forage rape mix.

Gimmers have been gathered off the heather hill and are grazing a reseeded grass hill field at Shandford.

All calves have received their first Rispoval 4 vaccine with the spring calves having been given both Rispoval 4 vaccines, bolused and been treated with Zermex pour-on wormer, in preparation for weaning and housing.

Our March-born calves are thriving with an average weight of 300kg for both heifers and steers and a top weight of 380kg. After weaning, cows will be scanned and sorted into appropriate batches and left out to graze fodder beet for as long as the weather permits.

We have had a couple of batches of finished cattle away per month and they have done well off grass with the last lot having gained 300kg over the summer period. An end of May-born Angus steer weighed in at 690kg live. On the whole the cattle are doing well on grass, which is the most important thing.

The bulls have had another swap around at the 6 week stage and come 9 weeks they will be removed. This allows us to keep our calving period tight and with two separate calving months we are able to concentrate fully on the calving, getting an average of 5 calves every 24hrs, and enables us to get a break in between each.

Fingers crossed things continue to go smoothly as autumn turns to winter on the farm.