Field Margins: Trusting the process with Jim Logan

After what had been a relatively soft, if very wet, winter, we felt like things were pretty well set up for turnout, lambing and calving. In the greater scheme of things our problems, although not inconsequential, haven’t been disastrous but still manage to cause a bit of worry and anxiety.

I recently chuckled when I read the proverb ‘The one who swallows a whole coconut must have complete trust in his anus’, but it soon got me thinking about how fitting the analogy is to the faith we put in the key component parts of our own livestock system.

Running a largely forage-based, low-intervention beef and sheep system, we place a lot of faith/dependence on a few key factors.

Grass growth and ground conditions are obviously key and now present as a very different challenge farming in mid-Teviotdale rather than upper Galawater previously. We now enjoy a much longer growing season but find turnout and housing decisions based much more on ground conditions than pasture growth.

One of the organic New Zealand Romney composite ewe with triplets having not been fed any concentrates (Image: web)

Tightrope exercise

On farms where we have a bit more scope there are nearly always options available to get around most eventualities. However, on the 29ha at Romavale itself, where we try to really push production and efficiency, it’s always a bit more of a tightrope exercise.

With a big age of 52 heifers to join the herd this year, we had made the decision to calve them in the fields at home so they could be supervised a bit more closely. Along with 51 yearling steers and the sale bulls, we knew that pasture demand would be significant on such a small area.

Four seasons of monitoring have shown us that good early season growth is fairly dependable at Romavale and, by the end of the first week of April, we had nearly 20 days of grass in front of us as a buffer. After some quick calculations, the expected growth of 40kgDM/ha/day almost exactly matched the feed demand for all those cattle, so despite some ‘mixed’ weather we turned out the in-calf heifers and sale bulls, which are just starting to come into their own and are ready for sale. Just under a week later, the ground seemed to be standing up well, so steers were weighed and turned out to complete the job.

Having already turned out all the cows and yearling heifers elsewhere it was a great feeling to get those last cattle turned out.

Last year’s calves had wintered well on a relatively cheap diet of silage and 1kg of blend per day, averaging 0.65kg/day and a turnout weight of 340kg at 9-11 months.

The commercial two-year-old heifers just starting to calve at Romavale (Image: web)

Two-day grazing season

Hopefully, they’re well set up for some good gains at grass. What followed, though, was our shortest grazing season on record, with the last cattle turned out on April 14, followed by rehousing the first of them on April 16! A light rain forecast turned out to be a local deluge and the morning greeted us with the sight of 51 steers standing up to their ankles in mud, having caused a bit of localised damage to their allocated paddock area from the previous day.

Turnout for the second and hopefully final time followed six days later. This delayed turnout will ensure a bit of extra grass in the rotation to take some quality silage in mid-May.

The stud and organic ewes have lambed out well through their first cycles, with perhaps a handful more prolapses and bigger lambs than normal – probably down to the good winterings they have enjoyed and their resultant excellent condition.

Lambs are off to a good start, and the slightly lower-than-normal grass growth has probably helped us retain control of pasture quality, especially on the organic stewardship ground that must be rested over the entire winter and where set-stocking to lamb can actually allow this rested grass to get away from us.

The outdoor lambing organic ewes have fared very well, and it is a system that just feels right for us, with no concentrate feed used in the breeding flock for three years now, including the triplets, necessitated by the strict Stewardship Scheme rules.

We are, however, so very dependent on a good team of dogs to help address the few problems that there are, and it’s here that our heartbreak has occurred. Shepherds will appreciate just how attached we become to our dogs, spending more time with them than anyone else for much of the year, so it was particularly upsetting to have two of James’ main dogs badly injure hips in separate freak incidents over lambing time. Enthusiasm and bravery can sometimes be their undoing in the eagerness to please their doting owners. Their recovery and return to work will need to be taken steadily, but we look forward to their return to the canine team.

The last few days have seen the last groups of conventional ewes and hoggs start to lamb at grass and have set away steadily. Surprisingly for hoggs, we’ve had a few prolapses in the pure Suffolks pre-lambing, a fact made all the stranger given that when the time has come, they are lambing their Shetland-sired lambs nice and easily. I’ll need to check the pedigrees of the offenders to see if there is a common link. This early application of a bit of selection pressure can only be positive for the stud flocks and their management in the long run.

The yearling Suffolk and Texel rams, which will be sold later in the year, are grazing on a field of last year’s young grass and have got away to a flying start. Several new sires seem to have left a very positive mark and I’m looking forward to sale season already.

One of the pure Suffolk ewe hoggs with her Shetland cross lamb (Image: web)

Early season growth

The early season growth of young grass always astonishes me, and with the 140 shearlings only requiring one-quarter of one of the young grass fields, there’s hopefully going to be the opportunity to grab some cheap, quality silage early in the season.

The high clover inclusion in the seed mix is going to pay dividends given the rocketing cost of fertiliser! Given the very early harvest, we had also taken the chance to sow much of this year’s new grass last autumn. It’s great to have it well established this early in the season, but it does still look a bit stressed after the very wet winter and spring. Hopefully the recent rising temperatures and longer days will see it greening up.

We need to have huge faith in lambing/calving ease in our system, and trust that, a bit like swallowing the whole coconut, our mating decisions won’t result in too many difficulties coming out the other end.

Stud lambing is always a key test, but again we’ve lambed the first 340 pure Suffolk and Texel ewes without having to resort to a caesarean.

Calving, unfortunately, hasn’t got off to such a flying start, with a couple of slightly premature calves, which always cause a bit of extra work, and a couple of awkward presentations in the early calves out of the heifers.

Fingers crossed things settle down and we get back to more ‘manageable’ coconuts!