Auchnerran: the farming year

The farming year at Auchnerran

Max Wright and Elizabeth Ogilvie counting ticks on sheep. ©Marlies Nicolai/GWCT

BACKGROUND

Auchnerran is a hill-edge farm in east Aberdeenshire, bordering the Cairngorms. The main body of the farm extends to 417ha with another 50ha or so shared with a neighbour. About 70% of the land is grass with some woodland, fodder crops and game cover. The soils are mostly acidic and sandy in nature. The principal commodity on the farm is the sheep flock, which also serves to mop up ticks on the adjacent grouse moor where the sheep graze from around April to November. More information about Auchnerran, including our annual report, can be found at gwct.org.uk/auchnerran. Auchnerran had a good year. Helped by relatively benign weather, the final lambing figures for 2020 were 129% (see Figure 1), which is our highest yet (see Table 1). We also produced a good silage crop and the best crop of turnips since we started growing them in 2017. The sheep flock now sits at around 1,400 ewes plus followers, after declining in number over the last few years as the unproductive, old ewes were gradually removed to improve overall flock health and productivity. The improvement in the quality of the animals has been evident at market, where we topped the blackface section on each occasion bar one in 2020.

We expect to reach our target flock size of around 1,500 ewes in 2021. This is the level that we think is optimal for the available grazing on the farm in winter, which is the main pinch point in the annual cycle, plus the optimal size for tick control on the summer hill-grazing area. This is where our flock performs an important role in reducing tick numbers to reduce burdens on sheep, wildlife and people, thereby reducing the transmission of pathogens like louping ill and Lyme disease. We achieve this by periodically gathering the sheep throughout their time on the hill to treat them with a pour-on acaricide which kills any ticks that attach over the subsequent six to eight weeks. Again, in 2020 the average number of ticks per sheep was less than one.

Our battle against rabbits continues with around 1,000 metres of new rabbit netting installed, incorporating 13 rabbit boxes, which to November enabled the removal of 740 rabbits from that section alone. Our monitoring had suggested numbers may have been dropping since control measures began, but it seems the rabbits had a good breeding season like many other species at Auchnerran. 2020 saw the start of a carbon audit on the farm as part of our Integrated Land Management Plan. Using the Scottish Rural College ‘Agrecalc’ tool, this involves

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50 Figure 1

Auchnerran farm profit, 2015-2020 (figures for 2020 are provisional) These have been updated since published last year

Farm profit

0 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 £000

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a review of all aspects of how the farm is run, its infrastructure, land use (eg. area of pasture, woodland, etc) and weather patterns, and is being led by our advisors Laurence Gould. For example, to accurately estimate the amount of carbon stored on the farm in its woodland, our students Olivia and Sophie, who started in September, have been identifying and measuring trees and their spatial arrangement in each wood. This process is not yet complete as we have yet to incorporate the estimate of carbon sequestered in our soils.

As readers may have seen in our GWSDF blog, our landlord, Andrew Salvesen, has now finished renovating the old mill buildings on the farm, for which we are extremely grateful. They now provide us with new offices, a laboratory and a large meeting room, opening up new opportunities for how we use the farm. The main mill building will now be our base of operations and allow us to host large groups of visitors in comfort. This also means we can accelerate our education and training programme which, subject to funding, will include developing educational materials in the education centre and on-farm, plus installing signposted routes around the farm with boardwalks across some of our wetter areas. We are currently exploring links with local schools and are in discussion with the Scottish Rural College about potential collaboration on several of its courses. KEY FINDINGS

The farm had a good year in 2020 with high lambing rates and a good crop of silage and turnips.

The sheep flock is on target to reach optimal size for the available winter grazing and for tick management on the hill in 2021. Work has begun on a carbon audit of the farm as part of the

Integrated Land Management

Plan, with preliminary results suggesting lots of carbon stored in the farm woods.

Renovation work on more farm buildings by our landlord,

Andrew Salvesen, is now complete, providing better office space, a new lab, a bigger storage area and a large meeting room.

This will facilitate further plans to expand all areas of our work at Auchnerran, especially in education.

Dave Parish Allan Wright Ross MacLeod

TABLE 1

Flock size and productivity (percentage of lambs reaching weaning age) at Auchnerran, along with annual silage production

Ewes % weaned Silage bales Bales per per year hectare

2015 1,440 60% 730 17 2016 1,205 97% 717 20 2017 1,126 120% 1,100 25 2018 1,000 126% 460 12 2019 986 124% 986 23 2020 1,400 129% 830 24 2021 1,500*