"Improving Our Lot" - Planned Holistic Grazing, for starters..

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
if you vaccinated for everything they say, it would cost a lot of money, we vaccinate for, rota corona, bvd, ibr, and up to last year, lepto, couldn't get the vaccine. The trouble is, you don't really know, that is stopping something, or not, like silage additive, used as an 'insurance'. We will vaccinate, but we no longer think it was blackleg, we have got a few red clover bales, with mainly r clover, that won't go through the mixer, son put one out yesterday, as hfrs/dry cows were in the yard, over night, bloat ? To my memory, blackleg blows them up, and the 'soft bits' go green quickly, not seeing that, but are blown, to a lesser degree.


moving north, or here down west ?
Go West, life is peaceful there
Looking for:

Not in South East, South Coast, East Anglia, East Coast or within 20 miles of a big city.
80 to 250 acres of pasture and woodland
Minimum 2 bed house
Water feature, preferably river frontage but a decent lake or ponds acceptable
No footpaths
No 3rd party rights of access across farm
Land in a ring fence
No near neighbours (& definitely not within 3 miles of a town)
All sporting rights in hand
Not tied into an agri-environment scheme
Extra points if house in good nick and well insulated or farm cheap enough that it doesn't matter
Extra point for a range of useful buildings
Extra points for south facing house and land
Extra points if Organic or low input history
Extra points for an existing renewable energy scheme &/ or eco heating

Budget £1.5M (£2.5M at a push for a really good candidate)

Seen some interesting ones in Devon, Somerset, Herefordshire, Cumbria, Yorkshire, Perthshire, Argyll and Bute, Dumfries and Galloway.
 

Guleesh

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Isle of Skye
Looking for:


No footpaths
No 3rd party rights of access across farm


Seen some interesting ones in Devon, Somerset, Herefordshire, Cumbria, Yorkshire, Perthshire, Argyll and Bute, Dumfries and Galloway.

My wish list would be the same as yours, but if I was relocating from here then anywhere else in Scotland wouldn't be on the list. With the right to roam laws, everywhere here is a footpath and there's an increasing number of people year on year determined to exercise their rights.

Not that I want to start any political arguments on here, but public access and public ownership of land is high on the current SNP agenda and I suspect things will get worse before they get better, especially if Scotland goes Independent.
 

Henarar

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Somerset
Looking for:

Not in South East, South Coast, East Anglia, East Coast or within 20 miles of a big city.
80 to 250 acres of pasture and woodland
Minimum 2 bed house
Water feature, preferably river frontage but a decent lake or ponds acceptable
No footpaths
No 3rd party rights of access across farm
Land in a ring fence
No near neighbours (& definitely not within 3 miles of a town)
All sporting rights in hand
Not tied into an agri-environment scheme
Extra points if house in good nick and well insulated or farm cheap enough that it doesn't matter
Extra point for a range of useful buildings
Extra points for south facing house and land
Extra points if Organic or low input history
Extra points for an existing renewable energy scheme &/ or eco heating

Budget £1.5M (£2.5M at a push for a really good candidate)

Seen some interesting ones in Devon, Somerset, Herefordshire, Cumbria, Yorkshire, Perthshire, Argyll and Bute, Dumfries and Galloway.
you should have said before, farm next door just been sold would have ticked all those boxes except the renewable energy, its east facing and it has one footpath hardly used though, two houses though, 115 acres some woodland was up for 1.8 mill
 

Bury the Trash

Member
Mixed Farmer
wouldnt want to go any farther that way than Ireland i dont think. not now .that ships sailed.

plenty of physical space out East but no where you go these days will take you away from all the governmental politico beaurocrap nonesense and control i dont think.
'
any how my favourite version...meaning West of Gordano Servs. at least (y)
 

bendigeidfran

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Cei newydd
a question, we lost 2 animals to blackleg last night, something we rarely see, these were both out on kale, given the fact the kale is on our driest ground, and by being the driest, it would be fair to say it's had rather a lot of slurry/muck applied over the years, so, because we haven't ploughed it for several years, just tined p/h, does that mean it is a greater danger of picking up b/leg, by virtue of everything being 'on top', not turned over, and it is very muddy up there.
Just a thought really, but we will be vaccinating all stock, in the next couple of days, double dose, 70p. And how many people routinely vaccinate cattle against it. At 70p, it should really be a no brainer, but, we lose an animal, start vaccinating, and it tails off, there was some vaccine in the back of the medicine cupboard, expiry date, 2011, so the last loss would have been before that !
To be fair, when we were all year calving, and buying groups of milkers, it was 'difficult' to keep up with batches of calves, and it drifts, now block calving, should be easier. We will be 'good' for a time, and then......... hope not though.
Sorry for your loss, keeping livestock can be a bit tough sometimes.
As you said, vaccinating is an insurance, i was shearing at a farm a few years ago with a lot of dry ewes in them, turned out he had disentry in the lambs it was a heartbreaking lambing. He hadn't vaccinated the ewes pre lambing for about 20 years, the amount of lambs lost that year was more than twenty years worth of vaccine.
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Clostridials are such a barsteward, always takes out your best booming lambs... leaves the runts alone.... had quite heavy losses here with the sheep this year, I don't think the prelamb booster was very effective.
Neither was not drenching the lambs until weaning... so yeah.... they still managed about 270g/day based on 100 days from the middle of lambing, a few orphans dropped the average but it still put a lot of money in the bank for us, about a hundred bucks per hogget
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
This is more regeneration that regenerative ag... but interesting nonetheless... imagine if we stopped selling the landscape's "food" all the time??
20210126_121416.jpg
20210126_121439.jpg
 
This is more regeneration that regenerative ag... but interesting nonetheless... imagine if we stopped selling the landscape's "food" all the time??View attachment 936602View attachment 936603
Different scale altogether but I once had to go and PM seven sheep that had died when lightning struck the large rock behind which they were sheltering out on the hill.
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Different scale altogether but I once had to go and PM seven sheep that had died when lightning struck the large rock behind which they were sheltering out on the hill.
We lost a few hoggs earlier in their stay due to a lightning strike, the only clue was a stretch of high tensile fencing wire was gone (well, blown into 3mm lengths, upon closer inspection). Not a speck of candlewax on the sheep 😉
 
What podcasts do people like listening too? I have my earphones in most of the day and like a change everyone and then.
The pasture pod with Michael Blanche is good, although I'm not sure that it hasn't ground to a halt. I'm working my way through the 'Working Cows' back catalogue. I listen to the ones that are relevant, so maybe 40% of the episodes but the good ones are good.
 
What podcasts do people like listening too? I have my earphones in most of the day and like a change everyone and then.

Aw not many really........... :geek:

Working Cows,
Farm Gate,
The thriving Farmer Podcast,
In Search of Soil,
Farmerama,
The Regenerative Journey with Charlie Arnott,
Regenerative Agriculture Podcast (John Kempf)
 

Tyedyetom

Member
Livestock Farmer
Aw not many really........... :geek:

Working Cows,
Farm Gate,
The thriving Farmer Podcast,
In Search of Soil,
Farmerama,
The Regenerative Journey with Charlie Arnott,
Regenerative Agriculture Podcast (John Kempf)
Thanks I have listened to a lot of them, my job is quite mind numbing! Are you doing a microscope workshop @johngalway?
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 79 42.5%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 65 34.9%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.1%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

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

    Votes: 6 3.2%

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

  • 1,287
  • 1
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/
Top