Forever Fendt
Member
- Location
- Derbyshire
8ft wall 15 to eaves
Investing for the future.
- Thread starter Andrew1983
- Start date
- Location
- Black Isle
It's something like that I have in mind, plus a straw shed and a 3 bay extension on another shed to replace a Nissan hut and also cover the handling system.
I guess it's a hint of @Walterp pessimism re the future of beef that is holding me back!
What situation lay behind the failures you speak of Walter? I would hope that if prices really do continue to slump and I hit real tough times that if I had got the place into shape that I could keep going in a worst case scenario without staff. Not really what I want to do though. Guess I need to try and do some cash flow predictions based on beef at £x.xx/kg and see how it would look.
Walterp
Member
- Location
- Pembrokeshire
No one likes new sheds more than me, with a recent complex here that is both flexible for cattle or sheep, or can be turned over to store corn, put in temp cubicles, etc. Looks good, too.
I paid for it with cash realised from the sale of milk quota. Stupid idea, looking back; a better idea would have been (as someone else suggested) to have put up a few bays at a time, paid for as you go, and invested the quota cash into more land (or shares, or houses, or whatever you think is a sound idea).
Borrowing for it? Now that is a stupid idea - in the cases I've seen, the capital works did not generate sufficient extra income to cover the interest, capital repayments and Income Tax, so that the costs acted to drag down the profits. Without, of course, the option to pause investment, 'cos it'd already been spent.
This place could do with an extra shed. Heck! I can see it now, a 120' x 45' incl cantilever, that'll be useful as a hospital unit, calving pens, heifer housing, straw storage, toolshed, etc. We've already agreed a site, but although we'd love to see it up right now, it'll be put up when/if the herd generates the spare cash to pay for it.
- Location
- Ceredigion, wales
He isn't over staffed. I don't know if you have the luxury of farming all your land in one block but @Andrew1983 has said that he's farming several blocks of land and I can assure you this needs lots of help. We farm four blocks of land here and even the home farm is sub divided by two unclassified roads which usually means you can't move stock unless you're mob handed. Just saying.
Why not reduce the sucklers to an amount that works well with what you have & expand your business with sheep which in theory need less infrastructure?
I'm in a similar position on a smaller scale with just me. I've been slowly expanding the herd but now am working out whether best to build a byre to allow further expansion or change direction a little with sheep.
I'm in a similar position on a smaller scale with just me. I've been slowly expanding the herd but now am working out whether best to build a byre to allow further expansion or change direction a little with sheep.
- Location
- Black Isle
I'm not a big fan of sheep to be honest, if possible I don't want to complicate things anymore than they already are. My brother has just sold his 350 ewes to allow him to concentrate more time on his sucklers. He has no full time staff just dad and self employed help. They have a better buildings set up but are still spread over 10miles and 4 farms.
I do agree though, you don't need much metal or buildings for sheep. Will see how my neighbour gets on, he has from a similar sized outfit to ours put on 500 ewes for this spring with the plan to cut his sucklers back.
Chimera
Member
- Location
- North Wales
Exactly right, I reckon that our spread of 4 units with 10 to 15 miles between each uses up nearly 1 man for the year.
Ring fenced farmers are at a huge advantage when it comes to labour, and thus comparisons are hard to make.
Moving 500 sheep on a ring fenced farm = man+ dog for 30 mins.
Same job on a fragmented unit = 2 men, rappa yard, dog quad tractor + trailer or truck and 5 loads @ 2 hrs each
Forever Fendt
Member
- Location
- Derbyshire
live for today Farm like you will live forever
- Location
- Montalt farm, Perthshire
Sounds like you are making a fair go of it already. If you can build a 120x50 without finance and buy some ground with spare cash off the back of 160 cows, 200 acres of grain and some pure ewes then go for it! Most variable bank loan can be paid back quicker if you come into spare cash without penalties.
Hilly
Member
- Location
- Scottish Borders.
- Location
- Black Isle
Land wasn't bought entirely with profits, 80% of it was funded from income external to the farm.
Shed was built clear of finance but we did get a cheap artic load of cement powder which we mixed ourselves to keep costs down. I also used ratchet straps instead of feed barriers as I wanted to wait until I could afford locking yolks. Still got the straps there now [emoji52]
make sure you use a good accountant/builder so all your bills say "renewing existing roof/concrete or repairing muck middin" then you will get 1oo% tax releif especially if you spread it over a few years
bit naughty but i"ll say nowt
Newby
Member
- Location
- East Yorkshire
make sure you use a good accountant/builder so all your bills say "renewing existing roof/concrete or repairing muck middin" then you will get 1oo% tax releif especially if you spread it over a few years
What is tax relief?
That thing you don't need if you're a farmer
- Location
- Montalt farm, Perthshire
Have done the same with ratchet straps! The way I am looking at it is if the farm can turn a small profit without using SFP money then I will use that SFP money to invest in infrastructure that will hopeful make farming in the future when payments are reduced or disappear more profitable and less dependant on outside labour. The only danger I would see in investing heavily is if the business is reliant on SFP money just to function day to day. If SFP money goes then you could find yourself with a big shinny shed that is a millstone round your neck. I am not saying that we manage this every year but this is my main goal for our business.
Can you not out winter on differed grazing/cover crops which inturn go back into cereals? @Andrew1983
To me 'investing' is taking money you have and doing something with it that will maximise it's return. It appears that many farmers think that 'borrowing' and 'investing' are the same word. I mean no offence and technically you can borrow cheap money and do something that will earn more than the interest and call it 'investing' but I would rather see it as 'speculating'. Doesn't make it right or wrong but I get a little tired of the farming press constantly urging farmers to 'invest' in this or that with money they don't have. Just my take on it and probably being over pedantic.
It may be that for the OP, borrowing some cheap money against an owned asset to improve his business will be totally the right thing to do. I would imagine a 600ac farm needs some good sheds but it comes down to careful calculations at the end of the day. Every business is different.
It may be that for the OP, borrowing some cheap money against an owned asset to improve his business will be totally the right thing to do. I would imagine a 600ac farm needs some good sheds but it comes down to careful calculations at the end of the day. Every business is different.
- Location
- Black Isle
I can do that for small numbers, but generally it's too wet, it did work well for 35 cows strip gazing kale last year, will try and do that again next year. I put a forage mix in for this winter and ended up putting sheep on it as cows would have destroyed a silage field to get to forage crop. I am thinking about putting short bits of hard road in from current roads to bits of woodland in the hope that we can just reverse a feed trailer full of silage in 2x a week with straw in rings for batches of maybe 20-30 cows.
With a bit of musical cows in the winter I could swap the autumn and spring cows over, start with spring calvers along the road in cubicle shed but bring them back at the end of February to my open plan shed for calving.
Thinking I will try and just get a straw shed up this year and then extend a silage pit, both should cut costs and also the straw shed would be empty by calving time so would be a bonus to have extra room then. If I get that done this year including pushing cow numbers up over 200 then see in 2017-18 how it's going to go for a big shed then!
Jonny B88
Member
- Location
- ballykelly. NI
In a similar position, current set up is mostly old and past it. Not efficient and in cases hazardous. As a young man hoping to be in the industry for the next 40 odd maybe more years, I don't want to be using the old system. So investment in sheds is a must really.