Any reports from Builth ?

[sheepwise]

My son bought a Texel shearling at Kelso from the same pen as the £16.000 one.When he came home he was put in a field of silage aftermath with a couple of feeding ewes and has not had a drop of hard feed since.He has not lost an ounce of flesh and I reckon he is actually looking better than on sale day. Put a couple of sponged ewes in with him yesterday morning and he had them both served within five minutes.Just saying that you can go to these sales and buy sheep which are still functional even though they have been well fed and brought out.

 

[Boydvalley]

'And the daddy of them all, labour for moving electric fences daily..'


Well said.
No grass keep here. Can't believe how much time I've got. No casual labour, Diesel bill right down. No keep bill. Lambs touch a bit better using a bit of conc for final finish adding a bit to final price. Busy fool is beginning to spring to mind.

 

[Highcountryshepherd]

I do get your point however. But I still think grass is generally the cheapest feed.

Example of an exception to this - paying £1 / week for keep for lambs as some of the Welsh contingent tell us is normal. Personally I'd rather keep them home and feed them when it gets to those sort of levels.

£1 a week is cheap 14p a day for grass is pretty cheap with someone else doing the work and provideing grass imo

 

[gatepost]

But it doesn’t grow all year, so you have to:

• Keep less sheep
• Pay to winter them elsewhere
• Put up a shed and feed concentrates

Those things are the costs of grass.

I think your being a little harsh, we all know in reality that if you were to restock with Antipodean bloodlines the grass would actually start to grow continually as soon as the new stock was turned in the field, such is the power of the perfect genetic hoof.

 

[neilo]

But it doesn’t grow all year, so you have to:

• Keep less sheep
• Pay to winter them elsewhere
• Put up a shed and feed concentrates

Those things are the costs of grass.

Or put a field of roots in for wintering (such as swedes to winter ewes for about £3/hd) making a wonderful clean up crop before reseeding in the Spring. Those reseeded fields would of course grow more grass again....

Takes me a lot less time moving the fence on roots than it would it would to put concentrates and bales out, or into an expensive shed.

 

[jendan]

My son bought a Texel shearling at Kelso from the same pen as the £16.000 one.When he came home he was put in a field of silage aftermath with a couple of feeding ewes and has not had a drop of hard feed since.He has not lost an ounce of flesh and I reckon he is actually looking better than on sale day. Put a couple of sponged ewes in with him yesterday morning and he had them both served within five minutes.Just saying that you can go to these sales and buy sheep which are still functional even though they have been well fed and brought out.

The time to look at him is this time next year,when hes tupped ewes and just got a handful of feed through winter.

 

[Ysgythan]

Or put a field of roots in for wintering (such as swedes to winter ewes for about £3/hd) making a wonderful clean up crop before reseeding in the Spring. Those reseeded fields would of course grow more grass again....

Takes me a lot less time moving the fence on roots than it would it would to put concentrates and bales out, or into an expensive shed.

OK, our farm is too wet to even contemplate this so it escaped my attention, but that’s still spending money on something that isn’t grass to keeping up stocking rates.

I have some sympathy for the argument that you are self employed, so whatever it costs you may as well fill your day doing something constructive. What I don’t get though is that this fair enough when it comes to moving electric fences, but not for other types of management, like putting clik on lambs, dosing, shearing etc. (Not having a go at you personally @neilo it’s a general point)

 

[sheepwise]

The time to look at him is this time next year,when hes tupped ewes and just got a handful of feed through winter.

Looks fit to tup 100 ewes

 

[jendan]

Looks fit to tup 100 ewes

Thats a given.He has to look fit to tup 100 ewes next year,and so on.

 

[sheepwise]

Thats a given.He has to look fit to tup 100 ewes next year,and so on.

The fact he is parading back and forth along the fence line to try to get through to ewes I feel is a good sign.

 

[jendan]

The fact he is parading back and forth along the fence line to try to get through to ewes I feel is a good sign.

Just out of interest,how many tups have you bought in your lifetime?

 

[sheepwise]

Just out of interest,how many tups have you bought in your lifetime?

Run 3000 commercial ewes so quite a few.

 

[Ysgythan]

Run 3000 commercial ewes so quite a few.

 

[Bury the Trash]

or maybe this one Ygsty .........

 

[texas pete]

Grass is cheap...

What’s Land per acre to buy
What is it to rent
How much BPS do you get

How much could you get for letting somebody else graze your grass

How much capital are you sitting on that could be put into stocks and shares or rented houses

Does anybody who says grass is cheap factor this income or capital foregone into their figures

(These are all rhetorical questions by the way, I don’t want to know your business)

What about diesel for manuring, rolling, harrowing, hedge cutting, liming, fertilising, topping, harvesting, reseeding, spraying

Fertiliser, lime, sprays, seeds

And the daddy of them all, labour for moving electric fences daily...

I'm not sure "grass is cheap" is the point really. Surely you can only judge the effectiveness and viability of an enterprise/particular system, long term, by the margin it leaves.....cost/kg DM, cost/kg LWG etc....

 

[neilo]

I'm not sure "grass is cheap" is the point really. Surely you can only judge the effectiveness and viability of an enterprise/particular system, long term, by the margin it leaves.....cost/kg DM, cost/kg LWG etc....

+1 Grass and grazed forage is far cheaper per kg of DM, but that relies on being able to grow and utilise it well of course.

I know a guy whose farm is based around an old WW2 airfield. Everything possible is in arable, but he runs 750 ewes on the stony/rubbishy/tarmaccy bits. The (old) grass grows there in the Spring but just stops in June/July, so he lambs in February and creeps hard to get everything gone by then. It's a system that has evolved to make best use of what he has, and it works very well. Reseeding the airfield bits isn't an option, and the rest is far more profitable under arable cropping. A low input, grazed grass system wouldn't be as easily introduced there as it would on a lot of farms.

 

[Ysgythan]

I'm not sure "grass is cheap" is the point really. Surely you can only judge the effectiveness and viability of an enterprise/particular system, long term, by the margin it leaves.....cost/kg DM, cost/kg LWG etc....

It wasn’t my point...

I wholeheartedly agree, concentrates have their place. When there is a shortage of (much cheaper) grazed forage...

 

[Ysgythan]

+1 Grass and grazed forage is far cheaper per kg of DM, but that relies on being able to grow and utilise it well of course.

I know a guy whose farm is based around an old WW2 airfield. Everything possible is in arable, but he runs 750 ewes on the stony/rubbishy/tarmaccy bits. The (old) grass grows there in the Spring but just stops in June/July, so he lambs in February and creeps hard to get everything gone by then. It's a system that has evolved to make best use of what he has, and it works very well. Reseeding the airfield bits isn't an option, and the rest is far more profitable under arable cropping. A low input, grazed grass system wouldn't be as easily introduced there as it would on a lot of farms.

Yes and when most of our land was on summer only grazing licences from the NCB, managed by ADAS we didn’t even own a creep feeder. Circumstances alter cases.

 

[Poorbuthappy]

+1 Grass and grazed forage is far cheaper per kg of DM, but that relies on being able to grow and utilise it well of course.

I know a guy whose farm is based around an old WW2 airfield. Everything possible is in arable, but he runs 750 ewes on the stony/rubbishy/tarmaccy bits. The (old) grass grows there in the Spring but just stops in June/July, so he lambs in February and creeps hard to get everything gone by then. It's a system that has evolved to make best use of what he has, and it works very well. Reseeding the airfield bits isn't an option, and the rest is far more profitable under arable cropping. A low input, grazed grass system wouldn't be as easily introduced there as it would on a lot of farms.

Yes and when most of our land was on summer only grazing licences from the NCB, managed by ADAS we didn’t even own a creep feeder. Circumstances alter cases.

I know nobody will want to admit it, but do we have consensus here?

 

[Ysgythan]

I know nobody will want to admit it, but do we have consensus here?

I’m always one for a bit of consensus, as long as it’s people consensing with me