All things Dairy

frederick

Member
Location
south west
How much land would you be cropping a year? Weather it's grass, maize or other, we're ploughing less than 10% a normal year, but have friends doing 40% with both min till and ploughing before Maize.
75 acres of maize 35 acres italian and 20 acres of reseed out of 480. Only 30 saw a plough.
It's not all farms and all their land but when you start growing red clover 2 years. Cereal crop. Maybe whole crop then 3 years grass.
7 year rotation 3 ploughs.

And I'm not knocking it, it works but all these green thing are never straight forward.
 
Location
West Wales
It's a very small percentage I think. There are 6 dairy farms within 2 miles of here and we would be the only ones with cows out day and night.

if your where I think you are then one of those farms would be due to how wet the farm is thus breeding a cow that is higher input meaning they tend to be housed. Still surprising though
They have been really heavy handed down here recently in trying to get people to do gamma and antibody tests in addition to skin - unnecessarily heavy handed.

One farmer I'm good friends with, they tried to make do a skin test one week and then gamma test the next week - they couldn't understand why he said that wasn't feasible!

Bunch of crooks. I'm convinced the government makes a fair bit of money from tb - or rather companies with links to mp's make money.

Sorry to hear you're having tb troubles, it's really sh!t. On a separate note, how are your josh cows/heifers doing/looking?
Subsidies food without actually having to pay the farmers. They take them as reactors and then into the food chain.
 

Martyn

Member
Location
South west
How much land would you be cropping a year? Weather it's grass, maize or other, we're ploughing less than 10% a normal year, but have friends doing 40% with both min till and ploughing before Maize.
Surely this needs looking at from litre of milk right up the chain of what goes into it, for example we use a plough quite a bit but barely bye in feed, well other farms may never use a plough but purchase lots of cake made from products from around the globe, it's all a very complicated calculation when you start looking into it.
 

sidjon

Member
Location
EXMOOR
75 acres of maize 35 acres italian and 20 acres of reseed out of 480. Only 30 saw a plough.
It's not all farms and all their land but when you start growing red clover 2 years. Cereal crop. Maybe whole crop then 3 years grass.
7 year rotation 3 ploughs.

And I'm not knocking it, it works but all these green thing are never straight forward.
True, we've stop short term rotation on youngstock farm, where red clover would follow winter Oat wholecrop and moved to long-term rotation using grass , white clover and now adding Plantain (not sure how long the Plantain will last under 2 cuts and then grazed yet) , we're in the wrong area to even think about Maize and this year growing pea and barley for wholecrop, for lower inputs and having too many red deer eating a winter crop.
 
Not the best of photos but she was a bit too preoccupied to pose for the camera. Sired by our home bred bull & her grandam was sired by another bull we bred. I’m sure something will go wrong with her now but looking like she could be a real head turner. Proof you don’t need to spend a fortune on semen.View attachment 1036772
Will you graze with your robots?
 

crashbox

Member
Livestock Farmer
Surely this needs looking at from litre of milk right up the chain of what goes into it, for example we use a plough quite a bit but barely bye in feed, well other farms may never use a plough but purchase lots of cake made from products from around the globe, it's all a very complicated calculation when you start looking into it.
I thought (and do think) ploughing was bad from a carbon sequestration perspective... and better to spray and use less tillage.

But apparently 1 tonne of AN requires the equivalent energy to drive a standard car 14,000 miles.

So fair play to @Martyn 👍

Got to get on the clover train
 

sidjon

Member
Location
EXMOOR
Surely this needs looking at from litre of milk right up the chain of what goes into it, for example we use a plough quite a bit but barely bye in feed, well other farms may never use a plough but purchase lots of cake made from products from around the globe, it's all a very complicated calculation when you start looking into it.
Yes, does seem not a lot of joined thinking really, have the same co2 score as a family member would who be high input 365 indoors and ploughs most of the farm for crops 🙈 and our grass don't count towards the total🤔
 

frederick

Member
Location
south west
I read somewhere this week on regenerative farming that mob grazing increased soil bacteria activity. Sounds good.
But on a good aerobic soil this bug activity would be respiring and releasing co2 so burning organic matter. So if it tripled bacterial activity it would triple co2 loss.
I'm definitely not saying it's bad but I don't think there is much sound science to back it up one way or another.
The only tool we currently have is regular testing of organic matter levels and that is still in its infancy.
We may have to be careful not to hop on the wrong band wagon.
 

sidjon

Member
Location
EXMOOR
I read somewhere this week on regenerative farming that mob grazing increased soil bacteria activity. Sounds good.
But on a good aerobic soil this bug activity would be respiring and releasing co2 so burning organic matter. So if it tripled bacterial activity it would triple co2 loss.
I'm definitely not saying it's bad but I don't think there is much sound science to back it up one way or another.
The only tool we currently have is regular testing of organic matter levels and that is still in its infancy.
We may have to be careful not to hop on the wrong band wagon.
You're probably right, our som levels are stable at 10, but shallow soils but high soil activity, as you can probably tell trying to get motivated to do carbon footprint for Arla, but upstand why it's collected, but don't understand why the leaches at Kite are involved 🤔, telling me if I reseeded more I would have a better co2 score and better forage, not understanding how am only feeding dry cows with it.
 

yin ewe

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Co Antrim
IMG_20220517_213005.jpg


Sent 3 cows to the plant last week, top 2 were straight off the robot giving 10/12l, bottom one turned out not in calf. All holsteins. Ground getting wet, cows starting to tramp, fertiliser over £700/ton, meal £400/ton, might be time to offload a few more and regroup in the autumn.
 

Whitewalker

Member
View attachment 1036820

Sent 3 cows to the plant last week, top 2 were straight off the robot giving 10/12l, bottom one turned out not in calf. All holsteins. Ground getting wet, cows starting to tramp, fertiliser over £700/ton, meal £400/ton, might be time to offload a few more and regroup in the autumn.
Why is it hand written? Last time we accepted a hand written receipt they robbed us in kg , it was the last cattle they took .
 

Wee Willy

Member
Location
Tyrone
View attachment 1036820

Sent 3 cows to the plant last week, top 2 were straight off the robot giving 10/12l, bottom one turned out not in calf. All holsteins. Ground getting wet, cows starting to tramp, fertiliser over £700/ton, meal £400/ton, might be time to offload a few more and regroup in the autumn.
View attachment 1036820

Sent 3 cows to the plant last week, top 2 were straight off the robot giving 10/12l, bottom one turned out not in calf. All holsteins. Ground getting wet, cows starting to tramp, fertiliser over £700/ton, meal £400/ton, might be time to offload a few more and regroup in the autumn.
376 kg,O+….are you sure she was a Holstein!!??
 

yin ewe

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Co Antrim
Why is it hand written? Last time we accepted a hand written receipt they robbed us in kg , it was the last cattle they took .

Payment comes from an agent, we take them to his yard and he sends 40 cattle a week to the meat plant. Normally we sell through the market but closed at the moment (reading test on Thursday).
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 80 42.1%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 67 35.3%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 15.8%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

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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