Advice for new converts?

TexelBen

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
North Yorkshire
Well I can only imagine how wet it is there if it’s anything like here. Only had a 4 dry days over Xmas here and apart from another odd one here and there that’s all we have had dry since last September last year.
Sheep looking good in that shed. [emoji106]
Good to see you have a plan in place as at the minute I have no plan[emoji85]
I’ve got dung piled high in one shed and pens to empty ready to start calving sometime in March.
Can’t decide if I should keep hold of last years calves and run them on next summer on my mowing land or sell them and carry on as normal, but at current cattle prices I’m gonna poop out financially whatever I choose I think.
Really desperate for a few dry weeks now.
It's really wet still, just walking across the field leaves muddy footprints, tho the grass has turned a better shade of green. They went out today for a few hours while I rejigged the shed, lovely bite of grass (probably 1 bite each) and they trotted back in ?
Have 2 pens now so I can seperate singles out after scanning, and more feed spaces in the walk-through feeders.
Sheds were full of muck the day before I brought them in, just one of those jobs that always gets pushed back.
Just need a big beefy generator to power the lights and I'd be all set.
 

TexelBen

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
North Yorkshire
Quick change to the pens, getting ready for scanning, small pen for singles and big for twins/trips. More feeding room too, which is nice.
(Buckets are either old ones that need eating up, or salt minerals)
IMG_20200113_175710.jpg
IMG_20200113_175717.jpg
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Well it's all changed ??‍♂️
We kept up with rotations but mother nature gave us a bit of a kicking.
Grass disappeared, it started raining and never really stopped. Feeding hay in 3 of the fields was hard work with how wet it was/is.

So all lambing ewes are inside [emoji51][emoji51]
At least they're dry, happy and easy to feed. The land isn't getting a beating and hopefully we can chuck em out after lambing onto a decent wedge of grass.

Keeping gimmers are running around at mother's (20 mins away) it's much higher land, but more options to keep moving them around.

Plan is to turn out onto decent grass here, then move at 2 weeks old (roughly) to mother's where there should be even more grass.
Keep them rotating round, getting big and fat ?


On the plus side, one off our charmoise ewes lambed a tup on Christmas eve, so far I'm impressed, and a little smitten. Little bugger weighs like lead ?

I'm not sure how we could have avoided this situation, but hopefully I've made the best choice.
I want to split up one of the bigger fields next year so they're all around the 5 acre mark, and I'll definitely be making more hay!View attachment 852651View attachment 852652
"Plan for what you want, manage what you have"

... that's my best advice.

It takes a long while to shift the "whole" operation across to regenerative, and that timeframe depends on what you can afford to do and where "you are at"

Your post reminds me of the Keyline Scale of Permanence, a little.

Cast your eye over this
 

TexelBen

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
North Yorkshire
"Plan for what you want, manage what you have"

... that's my best advice.

It takes a long while to shift the "whole" operation across to regenerative, and that timeframe depends on what you can afford to do and where "you are at"

Your post reminds me of the Keyline Scale of Permanence, a little.

Cast your eye over this
Thanks, I'll give it a read.
Takes a bit to keep it all in your mind at once ?
 

TexelBen

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
North Yorkshire
Not bad, rotated ewes and lambs pretty well.
All ewes are inside again, lambing starts on Thursday.
We've soil tested the whole farm, gonna try get that sorted asap, hopefully with pH sorted and p&k where they need to be, we'll see more improvement.
Still struggling for grass in winter, ewes been inside since Xmas 😱 I'd like to push that till scanning in Feb if I could
 

DanM

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
West Country
your not the only one with the winter grass issues - i ballsed up and didnt leave enough covers back in nov... winter wierdly is far harder to get right in terms of the longer/rested covers at this time of year than growing season due to its forgivness if you get it wrong.

Why do you think you ballsed up??
What residual did you leave in nov? and then when does that allow you to graze again following year.
 

DanM

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
West Country
i took them down to 1500 but the wet meant that it didnt come back well and we got alot of moss growth this winter on areas where usually theres clover... im all outwintered here - other than a trip into the woods during bad winter storms.

How long are you giving them to take it down to 1500? We’re also all outwintered. Have found here if we take it down to 1500 in 3 days or less the moss doesn’t come.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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