Countryside Seeds Ltd

Countryside Seeds Ltd

As of the 1st July a slight change to the business, it's become incorporated and with it a change of name. Farm machinery sales have not been a part of Farm Equip's business for a number of years and we felt now was the time for a new name to reflect more of what we do, so Countryside Seeds Limited was born.

We still offer friendly service and advice with up to date products at keen prices.

Company History

Farm Equip was launched by myself (Kevin) on the 1st January 1980. Initially selling farm consumables from the back of a yellow transit van.

Over the past few years the business has become almost predominately the sale of seed in its varies guises where it be a single bag of lawn seed to tonnes of grass/cereal seed.

I am in the very lucky position to be a distributor for some of the UK’s leading seed houses which include Barenbrug UK Ltd, DLF Trifolium Ltd, Grainseed Ltd and Soya UK to name a few.

I am more than happy to work with the customer on compiling their own mixture.

To contact me you may PM through the forum or I am very happy to be telephoned on 07881 804442.
Email: [email protected]

As like a lot of you I'm self employed so no 9-5 here so please telephone at your convenience.

 

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KALE varieties:

 

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Bombardier
New variety, ideal for autumn or winter use for dairy, beef or lamb production

End Use: Dairy, Beef & Sheep

Utilisation: Graze in situ & Zero Graze

Sowing period: Spring

Utilisation Period: Autumn & Winter

Bombardier is a new kale variety with the potential to deliver high dry matter yields ideal for diary, beef or lamb production. Bombardier will maximise the yield potential per hectare, but Bombardier’s
quality has been enhanced to ensure that the feed produced will be of the highest quality. Bombardier is also clubroot tolerant.

Strengths
Huge dry matter yields
Improved palatability of stem
Club root tolerance
Improved marrow stem type
Bred in the UK, for our conditions

 

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Keeper Kale
Leafy type for sheep production

End Use: Dairy, Beef & Sheep

Utilisation: Graze in situ & Zero Graze

Sowing period: Spring & Early Summer

Utilisation Period: Autumn & Winter

Keeper is very winter hardy and exhibits good lodging resistance. It is a medium/short type, ideal for finishing lambs and providing high quality winter keep. It has low SMCO levels (anti-nutritional chemical).

Strengths
Very leafy
Flexible utilisation
UK proven
Excellent digestibility

 

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Pinfold Kale
Fast growing with a flexible utilisation period

End Use: Dairy, Beef & Sheep

Utilisation: Graze in situ & Zero Graze

Sowing period: Spring & Early Summer

Utilisation Period: Autumn & Winter

Fast growing and ideal for early sowings. Pinfold will provide excellent yields in a short period of time.

Strengths
Ideal for early sowings
Flexible utilisation
UK proven
Good digestibility
Summer use as well

 

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Grampian Kale
Highly digestible variety for autumn or winter use

End Use: Dairy & Beef

Utilisation: Graze in situ & Zero Graze

Sowing period: Spring

Utilisation Period: Autumn & Winter

This is a variety bred in Scotland, which will produce excellent autumn or winter feed for both sheep and dairy cows. Grampian exhibits very high dry matter yields, combined with some clubroot and can be used in outwintering systems.

Bred by James Hutton Institute.

Strengths
Very high yields
Club root tolerance
UK proven
Excellent digestibility
Bred in Scotland

 

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Caledonian Kale
High yielding marrow stem type with club root tolerance

End Use: Dairy & Beef

Utilisation: Graze in situ & Zero Graze

Sowing period: Spring

Utilisation Period: Autumn & Winter

Caledonian is the highest yielding kale in our trials. It is clubroot tolerant, which now enables growers to continually sow kale on clubroot infected sites. Caledonian’s huge yield makes it ideal for utilisation by dairy and beef cattle.

Bred by James Hutton Institute.

Strengths
Very high yields
Club root tolerant
UK proven
Good digestibility

 

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Sovereign is a high yielding, medium-tall forage kale with good club root tolerance.

In agronomic tests conducted by the SAC in Aberdeen, Sovereign was shown to have good dry matter yields and excellent leaf-to-stem ratio, thereby increasing stock utilisation and animal performance. Successfully tested for winter hardiness and keeping ability, it has the potential to maintain good quality production over a longer usage period.

Sovereign does not produce the large thick stems common to giant kales even when planted at lower density, therefore increasing palatability.

 

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Grüner Angeliter Kale

A very high yielding variety with good winter hardiness and excellent feeding quality with fresh yields 15% higher than Caledonian kale and 10% higher than Bittern in German trials.

Grüner Angeliter has been the mainstay forage variety of kale in New Zealand for many years and since its introduction to the UK has become equally popular over here. It’s high yields makes it ideal for utilisation by dairy, beef cattle and winter feed for sheep.

 

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How to set up sheep rotational grazing.

 

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Managing for maximum efficiency.

 

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Planning for resilience:
This year’s 20th Positive Farmers conference in Cork, Ireland, talked about the resilience of pasture based systems and lessons from 2018. Aly Balsom caught up with some of the speakers after the event.

 

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Stocking rate drives profitability

 

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Measuring to aid management - Forager reports on GrassCheckGB, a new initiative to help all farmers across Great Britain improve grassland productivity and pasture utilisation.

 

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Controlled traffic farming - Boosts grass yields - Adopting controlled traffic farming on grassland has the potential to reduce soil compaction and drive about a 13% increase in dry matter yields.
Aly Balsom finds out more.

It can be all too tempting to go for the quickest and most direct route out of the field when you’re carting silage back to the clamp, but such a random approach could be damaging soils and depressing grass yields. Such ad-hoc movements of traffic over grassland means that, on average, about 83% of a field cut three times using a forage harvester, with slurry applied, will be covered in wheelings. On those
areas, soils will be compacted and less productive (see box 1). In fact, one SRUC trial highlighted a 14.5% reduction in yields over three years on both heavy and light soils when compacted using machinery.

Dr Paul Hargreaves, grassland researcher for SRUC has been involved in numerous studies looking at the effects of soil compaction. This has included AHDB’s “Controlled Traffic Farming:

Methods applied to Grassland Silage Management” Report, which involved SRUC and Harper AdamsUniversity College.

Paul believes grassland farmers have much to gain from adopting controlled traffic farming (CTF) systems, commonly used on arable systems. “It’s about trying to control the movements of machinery around a field to limit the area they cover and running all machinery along similar wheelings. It’s trying to think of grass as an arable crop,” he explains. This means that, rather than driving anywhere on a field, all traffic must follow the wheel marks that run parallel to the line of trajection and then around the headland. This may take more time and investment in equipment, but this is paid for with improved yields (see box 2). Increased fuel costs are also negligible, with results from an AHDB Yorkshire demonstration farm actually showing a reduction in fuel consumption from 7.98 litres/ha to 5.82 litres/ha by using CTF. The trafficked area in this case was reduced from 57.4% to 23.5%. “We need to reduce damage to soils and controlled traffic farming seems to be one of the ways to do it,” comments Paul. He recognises that a CTF strategy involves a bit of planning, but is more than doable on a grassland system. He suggests thinking about the following:

1. Calculate your smallest working width Establish the working width of your equipment (or contractor’s equipment). This is the smallest width all of the equipment will cover as they move across the field. For example, if your minimum working width is nine metres, then all your equipment needs to work within that width - including the rake, slurry spreader, forage harvester etc. This means equipment will likely have to work along 3m wide tyre tracks in the field. The critical thing is getting the forage harvester and trailers to work within this width (see graphic).

2. Plan out each field Once you know the working width of your machinery, divide the width of each field by this number to work out the lines. For example, if the field is 162 metres wide and your minimum working width is nine metres, split it into 18 lines. If a field is not evenly divisible by the working width, ensure you record which areas machinery is travelling on more and target remedial work on that area.

 

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Strong return on investment for grassland best practice

Extra milk or meat production generated from improved grassland can provide a healthy return on investment within a year, but factors including soil health and fertility are critically important to maximising the benefits.

This was the advice at a grass management knowledge exchange day at Four Crosses, Powys, from Germinal experts where over sixty livestock farmers gathered this week to sharpen their focus on a forage–based approach.

Speaking on the benefits of reseeding, Germinal GB’s Helen Mathieu said a cost of £200/acre to complete a full grassland reseed to the highest standard should not be a deterrent given the benefits that should result from higher pasture productivity.

“Rates of grassland reseeding remain very low at less than 5% per annum, well below that required to maintain leys in optimum condition,” she said. “When carried out correctly, reseeding will result in a significant increase in dry matter production and grass quality, boosting homegrown feed production and reducing reliance on bought–in feeds.

“Even if we assume a modest 10% increase in dry matter yield and a lift in the ME content from 10.2 to 11.0MJ/kg as a result of reseeding, that’ll equate to around an extra 5,700 MJ/acre of extra energy from grass. For a dairy farmer, that’s enough to produce over 1,000 litres of milk, worth around £300/acre – £100/acre more than the cost of reseeding in the first year, and the ley should remain productive for several years. Similar returns can be shown for beef and sheep farmers in terms of the extra liveweight gains possible from improved grassland.”

However, as independent soil and grassland specialist Chris Duller pointed out, results such as these are only possible if factors such as soil fertility are sorted in advance.

“Soil sampling to determine pH, phosphate and potassium levels in particular is essential ahead of reseeding, and I recommend doing so at least six months in advance in order to allow time for any issues to be addressed,” he said. “For optimum grassland performance, soil pH, for example, should be in 6.2 – 6.5, but we commonly see soil samples that show pH lower than 6.0. This is because simple management practices like liming are all too often overlooked.”

Mr Duller said the difference between a field at pH 6.1 and pH 5.6 would result in a dry matter yield penalty of around 1 tonne/acre, which he estimated to be worth £200/acre. Liming at a rate of 2 tonnes/acre would cost about £70/acre, resulting in a healthy return on investment within the year for an action that should have lasting benefit.

Visitors to the grass management event, which was generously hosted by Martin Evans of Carnbwll, also heard about the importance of resolving soil compaction issues and the benefits of effective grass weed control.

BENEFITS OF GRASSLAND RESEEDING

Table: Typical Reseeding Benefits

Source: Germinal GB

 

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HYBRID 4x4 is a highly productive hybrid ryegrass cutting ley, designed for four years and providing four cuts each year.

https://www.barenbrug.co.uk/farming/products/england-wales/hybrid-4x4

 

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Low input, high output, high protein cutting ley

• An intensive cutting mix that will produce up to four prolific cuts of leafy, high protein forage per year, with the option to graze cattle or finish lambs (although it's not advisable for breeding sheep due to phytoestrogen production).

https://www.barenbrug.co.uk/farming/products/england-wales/protein-sile

 

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Mix of chicory, white clover, red clover and plantain.

 

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• PROTA PLUS is an exceptionally versatile mixture which can provide a number of benefits.
• It is an ideal break crop in any arable rotation or an exciting alternative to brassicas in livestock systems.

 

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Long-term, low input, high output mix for beef & sheep enterprises