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Auchnascraw Farm Feature
PRODUCING TOP QUALITY STORE CALVES AT AUCHNASCRAW
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The Review features the McGillivray family at Auchnascraw, Ballindalloch where the herd’s 160 mainly Simmental cross cows are consistently producing calves averaging 500kg on sale day, at just over a year old.
Back row, left to right. Michael, Gordon, and Stephen. Front row, left to right. Cousins, Lucy and Leah.
Simmentals are at the heart of the McGillivray family’s commercial cattle herd, based in the north-east of Scotland at Auchnascraw, Ballindalloch. They run 160 mainly Simmental cross breeding cows, which go to the Charolais bull to produce top quality store calves to sell through the mart. It’s a cross that has worked successfully for the McGillivrays’ system for many years.
Twin brothers Michael and Stephen McGillivray run the business alongside their parents Gordon and Marjory, with help from all the family. Michael and his wife Katrina have two daughters, Abbie and Lucy, and a son, Mitchell, while Stephen and his wife Karen have Matthew and Leah. Michael and Stephen’s great-grandfather took on the tenancy of the Crown Estate farm, Auchnascraw, around 100 years ago. In 1991 they took on East Auchavaich, followed by Inchnacape in 2002. Overall, they’re now farming 500 acres of in-bye land and 1200 acres of hill ground. The farms sit at 1200ft above sea level, rising to 2000ft at peak, which brings its own set of challenges, as Michael explains.
“With the type of ground and the hard winters that we get, it’s not an option for us to outwinter the cattle here. They are all kept in bedded courts over the winter, which can be expensive. We need calves with good weight gain to make it worthwhile and that’s what we get with the Simmental/ Charolais cross,” he says.
The McGillivrays used to buy in replacement heifers, but 20 years ago, they started breeding their own after purchasing an Innerwick Simmental bull, and they’ve continued to do that ever since.
We bull 40-50 cows with the Simmental each year. We hand-pick the milkiest females with good feet, to produce the best possible heifer calves for breeding from,” says Stephen.
“We tend to go for bulls with plenty length, shape and nice colours. After the Innerwick bull, we had one from Delfur, then Newbiemains. The current Simmental bull is Auchorachan Joker, which we bought privately from Michael Durno,” he adds.
The rest of the cows go to the Charolais bull, with a Salers used on some of the Simmental heifers. “Using the Salers is a bit of an experiment. We like to keep a bit of cross breeding in the females, so we thought we’d try the Salers on some heifers and see how it goes. We aim to keep some of those females to put back to the Simmental bull,” explains Michael.
Calving is divided over the autumn and the spring, which helps with housing capacity and also to spread the workload. The family also run 1250 breeding ewes, so spring can be a busy season. Of the 1000 Blackface ewes, 900 are bred pure, with 100 put to the Bluefaced Leicester to breed replacements for the 250-strong Mule flock.
Around 70 cows will calve in the spring and 90 in the autumn, all having been bulled naturally. The spring calvers calve inside, from the first week in February until early May. They are turned out in June and go to summer grazing at Inchnacape and then creep fed before being weaned the first week in November and sold March/April time through Huntly Mart.
The autumn calvers are outside during the day and brought in at night, for ease of management as the sheds are fitted with cameras. They are then brought in for the winter until the following June, when half the calves are turned out and the other half are kept with their mothers until the end of July. They are fed beef nuts from
mid-July until they are sold at the end of September, also through UA Huntly.
This year’s spring batch averaged 476kg and sold to average £1204, while those sold at the end of September weighed an average 515kg and sold to level out at £1270.
“We get a lot of repeat buyers with the calves and we can get them to good weights at 13-months old. This year’s prices were up a fair bit, but we’ve needed it all as the cost of feeding and straw are also up,” says Michael.
With grass often not available to get the cows out until June, it’s quite a high input system with the cattle at Auchnascraw, but it’s one that still proves profitable due to the quality and weight gain of the calves. The McGillivrays say that much of that is down to the Simmental cross dams.
“The Simmental cows are very milky and consistently produce calves averaging 500kg on sale day, at just over a year old. They have big frames and can easily handle a Charolais bull; we don’t have to calve many cows. The fertility rate is good too and they are quite prolific – often producing twins. We sell a lot of Charolais cross calves – but a huge part of the reason that they are such good weight for age is the Simmental mother,” says Michael.
“We’ve noticed a general improvement in the Simmental breed over the years too – they are definitely longer and cleaner now,” adds Stephen.
The altitude and the climate of the farms can be challenging and makes beef production more costly than in other areas. However, the McGillivrays have an enthusiastic team behind them, with the recent lockdowns ensuring extra help at home from the children, who are all currently studying in further education except from Leah, who is still at school.
“Livestock production is definitely competing with energy consumption now. We rely heavily on draff for feeding the cattle through the winter. It used to be readily available on our doorstep, but it’s getting scarcer now, which is worrying,” says Michael. “There are still a lot of cattle in our glen though, and they help boost the rural community and tourism. Livestock definitely helps keep people there, which is essential in these remote areas,” he adds.
