6 minute read
DAIRY TALK
DAIRYTalk
Wallace Gregg
Wallace Gregg runs the family farm in mid-Antrim, near Ballymena, Northern Ireland, where he milks 180 pedigree Holsteins under the Frocess prefix and sells his milk to Dale Farm Co-op. Wallace is actively involved with Holstein UK, representing Northern Ireland at local and national level.
Isuppose one of the best things about being a farmer is that every day, and indeed every season, is different so that we don’t get bored doing the same task every day. This spring has certainly been different and has resulted in major challenges to our business.
The objective was to make top quality first cut silage, so that we could lower feed rates of really expensive concentrate over the winter. However, the weather just didn’t play ball, with non-stop showers for the majority of May, combined with high growth rates which saw us only getting our first cut in the pit on Friday, May 27. Now we were fortunate to get the crop in dry, with no effluent, but quality was way down.
The hold up in silage making also meant that afterwards, grass was supposed to be coming into the grazing rotation, but has been very slow. This has meant we have had to buffer feed the cows at grass, more to keep the rotation at around 21 days.
Managing grass during these swings in weather and grass growth has been challenging, as we have tried to match demand with growth. However, like all dairy farmers, we just got on with it by pre-mowing paddocks and taking out surpluses and we will target high quality leafy second and third cut silage to improve our forage quality situation. The plus side to a late cut is that we should have no worries about running out of silage over winter.
We get our vet to scan and pregnancy diagnosis cows every four weeks and touch wood, we have had a quite successful year with pregnancies and we would OvSynch any cows that are not served after 70 days in milk. We have found this works well combined with a heat detection system when the cattle are inside.
Our normal practice on our farm was to run two Holstein bulls, one with the cows and one with the heifers, during June and July, to help catch the last few services, but I think we will stop this as both our Holstein bulls have turned cross and hard to handle, not to mention that Holstein bull calves are virtually worthless at the minute due to high costs.
As we are all aware, costs and inflation have increased exponentially for everyone and although milk price has increased, unfortunately we entered into a fixed milk price scheme over a year ago which, at the time, seemed okay paying 29ppl for October to March and 26ppl for April to September, for about 15% of our milk supply.
With current costs this decision is costing us a small fortune and our dairy co-op is in negotiations with the clients to see if they will make a goodwill payment towards these suppliers. I believe they should for two reasons.
Firstly, a fixed milk price scheme was never intended for either party to make or lose excessive amounts of money, but as a mechanism to guarantee supply at a reasonable price to help with forward planning. And secondly any participating farmers will probably never enter any such scheme again after getting ‘burned’ so badly this time and will resent the excessive profiteering these firms are carrying out at their expense.
In conclusion, a shout out to all the local agricultural shows that are back up and running after Covid-19. We were recently at our local show, Ballymena and had a great day, so thanks to all the volunteers that help at all the shows throughout the UK to help preserve this great part of our rural community.
Claire Eastham
Claire Eastham farms with her husband Martyn in Dorset, where they milk 120-spring calving cows. After gaining knowledge and experience working for other businesses, the couple started their own dairy farming journey in 2015 by taking on a share farming agreement before progressing to their current county council farm.
Martyn and I recently applied for a much larger opportunity on a longer Farm Business Tenancy (FBT). Unfortunately, after making the final three, we were unsuccessful this time around, but this got me thinking about how vital it is to have a range of farm sizes.
By not having a range of farm sizes, we are cutting rungs out of the farming ladder, meaning it is stagnating as it takes so much longer to reach the next rung and free up space for those starting out.
Medium-sized holdings seem to have disappeared or amalgamated, which creates an easy solution for a landlord to only have to deal with one tenant.
We are fortunate to have our county council holding and are halfway through a 10-year FBT, so have no pressure to move. But we want to progress our business, are able to do so and should hand the opportunity back to the next new entrant.
As George Henderson wrote in The Farming Ladder:
“Once started you will find others on the ladder too, some above and some below; give them all a helping hand.”
Many farmers will soon be faced with some tough choices due to a reducing Basic Payment Scheme (BPS), a lack of reliable labour and high input costs.
Do these farmers radically change system, give up or help someone else on their way by forming a joint venture?
Full of new fresh ideas and enthusiasm to push forward a business if both parties are open, this is a great way forward and an alternative way to give people that first chance.
New entrants
If this Government was serious about helping new entrants into farming, there would be the retention of BPS or similar for under 45-year-olds – perhaps even with a scalable pay rate geared towards smaller holdings, low interest rate, Government-backed loans for those who propose a sensible business plan and a matching scheme for such joint ventures.
However, there also needs to be a variety of second and third rungs. I would say to any estates before taking back in hand or amalgamating, consider if you are cutting rungs out of the ladder and what that chain brings to the rural economy and communities.
Back on-farm, seemingly like the rest of the country, we are very dry with no real rain forecast, we have been buffer feeding already to extend our grazing round and keep fresh grass going into the cows, but growth is so low.
We have grazed the herbal lays after letting them flower and so this long cover slowed the round down and with some trampling effect would have helped to nourish our soils.
Building organic matters to help with water retention and build drought resilience as well as improve carbon capture is our key focus on farm.
The noise increase was also noticeable as we crossed the threshold from a straight ryegrass and clover ley into our more diverse swards.
The variety of insects and butterflies was astounding. This was definitely the motorway of bug life. We cannot see how this is not the future of dairy grazing. We are on heavy soil and the birdsfoot trefoil and yarrow have performed exceptionally well.
This year we have so far used only 20kg of nitrogen on average per acre across the whole 264 acres and will still hope to utilise 10.5 tonnes of home-grown dry matter, so are well on the way to a very low input system.
The hay we grow has all been cut and baled and is heading into the shed as I type. It was perhaps a little overstood and not quite as sweet smelling as previous years, but this will be used for our dry cows come winter.
Breeding has finished and so we will have our PD sessions soon and possibly with the dry weather and good cull value we may sell our empty cows slightly earlier this year.
