Seagulls

[Simon C]

So nearly every arable farmer in Essex has been ploughing or deep cultivating every day for the past few weeks, but guess where all the seagulls have been.

This is my oat stubble that was drilled with a cover crop about three weeks ago. They appeared in the field as soon as I arrived with the drill and haven't left since, every single day they are there, from daybreak till dusk. Pretty amazing that this undisturbed field can sustain thousands of birds for all that time, and that there are tractors turning over soil all around, even just over the road, and they don't bother to go and look.

John Landers suggested to me recently that as the government is so keen on paying farmers to leave beetle
banks across their field, it ought to pay no-till farmers a small fortune, our whole farms are beetle banks!

 

[Devon James]

Looks like the pigeons on our osr!

 

[Robigus]

Funny but I had a chap ploughing in north Essex today and he mentioned that he had not seen a single seagull.

 

[Dockers]

Ploughing !!!!
How dare you swear on here !

 

[britt]

They should clean up any slugs.

 

[shakerator]

No till crops done very well this year

However, I will be ploughing a proportion this year mainly to help workflow windows

Not a fan off clean tillage + residual herbicide stack but it's new land, muck been spread , fresh reset required

 

[haggard143]

Funny but I had a chap ploughing in north Essex today and he mentioned that he had not seen a single seagull.

ploughing muck in no seagulls here,last year buzzards would sit in a tree and the seagulls would not go near,we have newly high numbers of buzzards (south norfolk) does this happen elsewhere

 

[britt]

Buzzards don't bother the gulls here, they prefer leverets, grey partridge, lapwing chicks, and everything else that "the farmers" get the blame for the decline of.

 

[farmerm]

Buzzards don't bother the gulls here, they prefer leverets, grey partridge, lapwings, etc.

same here if anything the seagulls seem to scare off the Buzzards!

 

[arcobob]

As a competition ploughmen with a degree in agriculture and a lifetime of experience in various agronomic capacities I can assure you that seagulls love earthworms but there are very few in arable land today. Despite the modern trend to incorporate green crops and organic matter in the form of straw, earthworms don`t like living in concrete. They prefer to move through the top eighteen inches of soil in order to satisfy their needs for moisture and organic material. The passage between the strata is now severely restricted. Not only are seagulls a bellweather but so also moles. How many moles do you see in arable land ? We are destroying our soils with minimal till and horrendously heavy machinery. 300hp and fifteen tonnes of tractor on a four leg subsoiler are not the answer or the salvation. Until the short termists can get this between their ears agriculture production is on a downward trend. We are running out of economical and eco friendly quick fixes so better wake up before it is too late.

 

[Kiwi Pete]

As a competition ploughmen with a degree in agriculture and a lifetime of experience in various agronomic capacities I can assure you that seagulls love earthworms but there are very few in arable land today. Despite the modern trend to incorporate green crops and organic matter in the form of straw, earthworms don`t like living in concrete. They prefer to move through the top eighteen inches of soil in order to satisfy their needs for moisture and organic material. The passage between the strata is now severely restricted. Not only are seagulls a bellweather but so also moles. How many moles do you see in arable land ? We are destroying our soils with minimal till and horrendously heavy machinery. 300hp and fifteen tonnes of tractor on a four leg subsoiler are not the answer or the salvation. Until the short termists can get this between their ears agriculture production is on a downward trend. We are running out of economical and eco friendly quick fixes so better wake up before it is too late.

Very brave of you to say so Bob.

 

[Louis Mc]

As a competition ploughmen with a degree in agriculture and a lifetime of experience in various agronomic capacities I can assure you that seagulls love earthworms but there are very few in arable land today. Despite the modern trend to incorporate green crops and organic matter in the form of straw, earthworms don`t like living in concrete. They prefer to move through the top eighteen inches of soil in order to satisfy their needs for moisture and organic material. The passage between the strata is now severely restricted. Not only are seagulls a bellweather but so also moles. How many moles do you see in arable land ? We are destroying our soils with minimal till and horrendously heavy machinery. 300hp and fifteen tonnes of tractor on a four leg subsoiler are not the answer or the salvation. Until the short termists can get this between their ears agriculture production is on a downward trend. We are running out of economical and eco friendly quick fixes so better wake up before it is too late.

So your solution is to plough?

 

[Cowabunga]

Seagulls abound at our local McDonalds too. From one year to the next. Its only half an acre but it sustains many very fit-looking birds with and without feathers. Perhaps that field has had chips spread on it?

 

[Jerry]

Good numbers of gulls here still but we are on the coast and have a whooping great estuary of international importance a few mins gull flight away.

What I have noticed the last few winters is we are getting big numbers of lapwings overwintering on both drilled crops and over wintered stubbles. Drilled with a Claydon.

They stayed with us for a couple of months and rarely left the farm night or day. Im talking hundreds of them.

Long may they visit!

 

[Kiwi Pete]

They are amazing birds at their ability to find a food source.
I am only a couple of miles island and seldom see one land here, but when they do, there's thousands of the buggers.
They are like vacuum cleaners, won't affect my worm population much, but great for removing slugs..

 

[Billboy1]

Plenty of seagulls here behind plough and sumo but they leave when 1/2 dozen buzzards turn up

 

[arcobob]

Plenty of seagulls here behind plough and sumo but they leave when 1/2 dozen buzzards turn up

Possibly a sign that your soil is well cared for. The worst cases of excessive compaction that I have noticed is when green cover is scratched in on stubble adding further compaction without any form of subsoiling. Worm populations are easily decimated and take a long time to recover. Subsoilers provide some macro aeration and drainage but there is no substitute for complete freedom of movement for earthworms to provide the micro aeration, drainage and distribution of organic matter.
The answer is less compaction due to poorly designed machinery, more timely operations in the correct conditions and frequent ploughing together with subsoiling in dry conditions.

 

[Farmer Roy]

I'll upset some people, but direct drilling, or zero till, ISNT the be all & end all. It is only one step in the process. It ONLY works is you limit / control all traffic over the land, otherwise, yes, compaction does increase. It also requires stubble retention / full ground cover & active soil biology
The only ways around this that I can see are either very wide machines running on permanent or semi permanent wheel tracks ( CTF ), gantry style machines, or VERY light small "swarm" type machines which are still a few generations away I believe

In 30 odd years of zero till experience, on a variety of soil types, I will confidently say that it will soften & improve soil structure & increase soil biological activity, but only if traffic is controlled & groundcover is retained . . .
How you achieve this while baling straw, with the removal of crop residues & the high traffic that is involved - I don't know

 

[Kiwi Pete]

Possibly a sign that your soil is well cared for. The worst cases of excessive compaction that I have noticed is when green cover is scratched in on stubble adding further compaction without any form of subsoiling. Worm populations are easily decimated and take a long time to recover. Subsoilers provide some macro aeration and drainage but there is no substitute for complete freedom of movement for earthworms to provide the micro aeration, drainage and distribution of organic matter.
The answer is less compaction due to poorly designed machinery, more timely operations in the correct conditions and frequent ploughing together with subsoiling in dry conditions.

And feed them plenty of trash!
I'm absolutely astounded how many baby worms there are here just now, about half to 3/4 inches long.
You're dead right IMO; it's that freedom of movement that lets them thrive (and beat the rainwater down). I seldom see them if it's been wet, they dive to incredible depths if they are able, when I dug up a water pipe we found worms way down in the subsoil- almost a metre deep, below the waterleak by a foot.
I wouldn't have believed it, if I hadn't seen it myself.

 

[arcobob]

I'll upset some people, but direct drilling, or zero till, ISNT the be all & end all. It is only one step in the process. It ONLY works is you limit / control all traffic over the land, otherwise, yes, compaction does increase. It also requires stubble retention / full ground cover & active soil biology
The only ways around this that I can see are either very wide machines running on permanent or semi permanent wheel tracks ( CTF ), gantry style machines, or VERY light small "swarm" type machines which are still a few generations away I believe

In 30 odd years of zero till experience, on a variety of soil types, I will confidently say that it will soften & improve soil structure & increase soil biological activity, but only if traffic is controlled & groundcover is retained . . .
How you achieve this while baling straw, with the removal of crop residues & the high traffic that is involved - I don't know

The root vegetable growers in the East of England learnt this lesson years ago. Everything is now grown in pre-formed beds. No wheel runs where a cop is going to grow but due to crop rotation and poor practice in between this does not provide the complete solution. With the advent of GPS it should be possible to achieve what you are suggesting on practically all crops by applying a giant bed system only working with narrower beds within the macro layout when absolutely necessary.
The sugar beet growers in the East Anglia are suffering badly from huge harvesters weighing over twenty tonnes and carrying ten tonnes of beet on a full tank. Often they pull out of the crop on full load and charge off up the field via the shortest route to a tipping point rather than unloading into a trailer. Many farmers have given up growing sugar beet, not because the crop is unprofitable in itself, but the knock on effect on subsequent years.