Working hours.

Only tractor work we do is fert, tedding and we mow the outside 3 swaths when silaging.

Thinking about dropping wheat as we are not geared up to handle 600+tons of grain its always a rush to get sheds clean etc. We have to tip on the yard then shove it in with the merlo.

Im thinking about going to just maize and grass. The only downside is wheat is a great entry and exit crop. So may grow a few acres for wholecrop just to facilitate rotation.

I'm taking another employee on and we're going to fence the rest of the new land so we don't have to make any bales for 3rd and 4th cut on silage ground. We made 1000+ last year we wasted 7+ working days moving them last year.

Now we gave a shed for every animal things should be easier. We're also carrying too many young stock at the moment. We have 240 and we only need 170. Once we've got rid of johnes and a few of the big cows I hope we can reduce that number.

Ditch the mowing, and caustic treat the wheat?

Wholecrop, maize and grass is a lot simpler, a lot of my customers soon take to wheat when they see how easy it is to reseed behind it and how you can grow a lot off stuff for not a lot of money, plus the ability to kill docks/thistles/buttercup in it, also the workload is spread out at different times of the year to maize/grass.

Bales are just a complete PITA from beginning to end.
 

DairyGrazing

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
North West
I must add its not all rainbows and unicorns. Mastitis went from 30% to 70% in 18 months, can't get milk from forage up, have a lot on pneumonia at 2 months to 5 months in heifers preg rate 20% etc

If you believe that technical performance drives profitability we'd be proof thats not the case. I'd say we were below average on most things but top 10% on profitability.
 
I must add its not all rainbows and unicorns. Mastitis went from 30% to 70% in 18 months, can't get milk from forage up, have a lot on pneumonia at 2 months to 5 months in heifers preg rate 20% etc

If you believe that technical performance drives profitability we'd be proof thats not the case. I'd say we were below average on most things but top 10% on profitability.
I 100% agree with you.
 
I must add its not all rainbows and unicorns. Mastitis went from 30% to 70% in 18 months, can't get milk from forage up, have a lot on pneumonia at 2 months to 5 months in heifers preg rate 20% etc

If you believe that technical performance drives profitability we'd be proof thats not the case. I'd say we were below average on most things but top 10% on profitability.
The only bit I don't agree on Is, if your making a packet, employ an extra hand.
 

DairyGrazing

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
North West
Ditch the mowing, and caustic treat the wheat?

Wholecrop, maize and grass is a lot simpler, a lot of my customers soon take to wheat when they see how easy it is to reseed behind it and how you can grow a lot off stuff for not a lot of money, plus the ability to kill docks/thistles/buttercup in it, also the workload is spread out at different times of the year to maize/grass.

Bales are just a complete PITA from beginning to end.

Agreed caustic wheat was a game changer for us dropped 4kg of blend for 6 kg of caustic. Milk went from 26l to 31l and stayed there or there abouts ever since. Problem we store it in the young stock sheds so we have to clean them out, then can't bring them in until we've used the wheat. Half is stored at another farm we farm half of but cant use the sheds for stock.

Your right wheat gives you great flexibility wholecrop, crimp, caustic or sell standing. Wheat is at a good time of year things are quiet in the autumn as apposed to fighting with silage, getting stock out etc in the spring

Just worry that with our changing climate we could be exposed having 550 acres of grass. The last few years have been good growers but 2008-2012 we never made 3rd of 4th cut because it never rained from July to Nov
 

cows sh#t me to tears

Member
Livestock Farmer
I know border dykes are a pain but irrigation in the sunshine is a lot more fun than being in mud up to your ankles half the year , why do you need to be attending to water at 3 am ? I always set enough clocks after milking to last until next morning
Trouble here is its not just one outlet to deal with.. Generally I will have 3 lots of water going at the same time( sometimes 4 or even 5). By the third watering some bays may only be taking 2 to 3 hrs to water. I have timers that have bay sensors that are all radio controlled. They work in teams of 3. They all need shifting at some point and of course never at the same time. When watering close to house I find it just as easy to set the alarm and just change bays rather than moving timers and monitors.
 

DairyGrazing

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
North West
Ditch the mowing, and caustic treat the wheat?

Wholecrop, maize and grass is a lot simpler, a lot of my customers soon take to wheat when they see how easy it is to reseed behind it and how you can grow a lot off stuff for not a lot of money, plus the ability to kill docks/thistles/buttercup in it, also the workload is spread out at different times of the year to maize/grass.

Bales are just a complete PITA from beginning to end.


Ideal winter ration
75% grass silage
25% wholecrop
1kg rape meal
1kg maize gluten
6kg caustic
8kg brewers

Dry cow ration
20kg silage
5kg rotogrind straw
minerals

Fed to far offs and to the close to calving cows but they are grouped separately.

I would prefer to feed the far offs bales but we cant make poor enough silage they put too much weight on.
 

DairyGrazing

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
North West
Trouble here is its not just one outlet to deal with.. Generally I will have 3 lots of water going at the same time( sometimes 4 or even 5). By the third watering some bays may only be taking 2 to 3 hrs to water. I have timers that have bay sensors that are all radio controlled. They work in teams of 3. They all need shifting at some point and of course never at the same time. When watering close to house I find it just as easy to set the alarm and just change bays rather than moving timers and monitors.

I only operated pivots on the properties I managed they were a dream. Grease, check nozzles, fill ruts etc

The only downside was twice in high winds at 3 in the morning I had to go out and point them down wind.
 

pappuller

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
M6 Hard shoulder
95% of heifers calf before 24.5 months. No concentrates after 4 months. Big bale silage and grazing only. Cows out in March and housed by end of November. Limited grazing acreage, small parlour, need to maximise output. Feed costs 5p, culling 18% so it works in principle we just need to simplify and streamline
thought you had 38/38 on the robotic milking thread ? dosent sound like a small parlour to me
 

bigw

Member
Location
Scotland
Trouble here is its not just one outlet to deal with.. Generally I will have 3 lots of water going at the same time( sometimes 4 or even 5). By the third watering some bays may only be taking 2 to 3 hrs to water. I have timers that have bay sensors that are all radio controlled. They work in teams of 3. They all need shifting at some point and of course never at the same time. When watering close to house I find it just as easy to set the alarm and just change bays rather than moving timers and monitors.

I worked on a place up near kununurra that had about 1200 acres under irrigation and a lot of the water was put in using siphon pipes. Thankfully I never had to help with it and the boss normally did it, he used to say that snakes would sometimes lie in the pipes, no thanks!!
 

cows sh#t me to tears

Member
Livestock Farmer
I only operated pivots on the properties I managed they were a dream. Grease, check nozzles, fill ruts etc

The only downside was twice in high winds at 3 in the morning I had to go out and point them down wind.
Next door had his blow over a few years ago now. Makes a hell of a mess. Things are easier than when I first came home . One section of farm had 72 pipes and 5 channel stops. I got it down to 19 outlets and 2 channel stops. Theres just a lot more irrigation land to handle now than when I started...As for snakes in syphons....yup..and 6"clay pipes as well. One thing you learn very quickly when preparing sub paddocks for autumn watering was never ever stick you arm up a pipe to clean it out....
 

DairyGrazing

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
North West
thought you had 38/38 on the robotic milking thread ? dosent sound like a small parlour to me

Poor description is a big parlour in an extremely small facility. Two row collecting yard, singles file 90 degree exit, 30 degree stall work, only 2 ai stalls for handling. Its a slow parlour in the winter but quicker in the summer. If we didn't have to push cows out it would be an hour quicker per milking. That said most of the time cows giving a lot of milk don't do anything quickly. We're only doing 738 litres per hour per man if I was to build another parlour id expect to double that minimum, 200 cows an hour +.
 

DairyGrazing

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
North West
You just have to be careful. I wear rubber gloves goggles once mixed it is fine. Its a pain to mix weekly. When we do crimp its done in a day. I tend to find the cows are sluggish on crimp. Loads more milk in caustic than anything else we've fed
 

The Agrarian

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Northern Ireland
When I started full time 16 years ago I was just out of education, wasn't courting steady, had no ties and no pressure outside of farming. It didn't strike me that I might be working harder than I needed to, and there were no conflicting forces to draw my attention to it. Fast forward to today and things are very different. Wife, three young children, and aging parents with only me to keep an eye on them, so the work/life balance needs to be different.

Farm demands - 180 milkers, 30ish drys, AYR calving and housing, robots, all followers reared, AI heat detection and stock work done by me, average two vet calls per year, only work subbed in is feet trimming. 500 acres grass ensiled by the two of us over four cuts with wagon, slurry and all field work also done in house. Machines all serviced, dig our own drainage, reseeding and grow 30 acres winter cereals ourselves. Only contractor brought in is combine and baler. Farm repairs and welding too etc

Summary of our input -

Full time man and me as the only labour apart from a few hours here and there in the summer from a local lad to go on rake if there is one around. We have every other weekend off, and the weekends are usually 2 hrs morning and evening if we set it up right on Friday. I always turn up on the two mornings of my weekend off to see the stock, feed the babies, and do AI if necessary. He gets the usual 5-6 weeks holidays off and I cover him. Our working weekday in the winter is quite manageable, 8-6 with an hour for lunch. We do whatever crazy hours we need to do to get grass in when the weather is there, but try my best to stick to normal hours the rest of the time.

The issue still to resolve - I don't take as much time off as I should. I do try to do stuff with family in the afternoon of my weekends off, and we go away for a week in summer between cuts. Apart from that, if I'm in the country, my brain is constantly switched on to the farm. I think we are running the labour aspect pretty lean to be honest, and there isn't much more in it. Dropping all the field and forage work isn't an option as it's a major cost benefit for me at this stage. If I get to my final decade in the job and there isn't a successor, then I'd definitely take the handy route on silage. For now, we are able to work it in, and with our lower and more volatile milk price here we need to put the effort in to stay lean. So there's no magic bullet really, just pursuing the never ending grind to take unjustified time out of the system, and to keep streamlining things.
 

pappuller

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
M6 Hard shoulder
When I started full time 16 years ago I was just out of education, wasn't courting steady, had no ties and no pressure outside of farming. It didn't strike me that I might be working harder than I needed to, and there were no conflicting forces to draw my attention to it. Fast forward to today and things are very different. Wife, three young children, and aging parents with only me to keep an eye on them, so the work/life balance needs to be different.

Farm demands - 180 milkers, 30ish drys, AYR calving and housing, robots, all followers reared, AI heat detection and stock work done by me, average two vet calls per year, only work subbed in is feet trimming. 500 acres grass ensiled by the two of us over four cuts with wagon, slurry and all field work also done in house. Machines all serviced, dig our own drainage, reseeding and grow 30 acres winter cereals ourselves. Only contractor brought in is combine and baler. Farm repairs and welding too etc

Summary of our input -

Full time man and me as the only labour apart from a few hours here and there in the summer from a local lad to go on rake if there is one around. We have every other weekend off, and the weekends are usually 2 hrs morning and evening if we set it up right on Friday. I always turn up on the two mornings of my weekend off to see the stock, feed the babies, and do AI if necessary. He gets the usual 5-6 weeks holidays off and I cover him. Our working weekday in the winter is quite manageable, 8-6 with an hour for lunch. We do whatever crazy hours we need to do to get grass in when the weather is there, but try my best to stick to normal hours the rest of the time.

The issue still to resolve - I don't take as much time off as I should. I do try to do stuff with family in the afternoon of my weekends off, and we go away for a week in summer between cuts. Apart from that, if I'm in the country, my brain is constantly switched on to the farm. I think we are running the labour aspect pretty lean to be honest, and there isn't much more in it. Dropping all the field and forage work isn't an option as it's a major cost benefit for me at this stage. If I get to my final decade in the job and there isn't a successor, then I'd definitely take the handy route on silage. For now, we are able to work it in, and with our lower and more volatile milk price here we need to put the effort in to stay lean. So there's no magic bullet really, just pursuing the never ending grind to take unjustified time out of the system, and to keep streamlining things.
Only time I truly switch of is when I'm on the plane cos for a week theres sweet fa I can do if things go tits up at home
 

cows sh#t me to tears

Member
Livestock Farmer
Last 2 days were rather large. We had 20mm of rain the other day so been discing 110 ac of ground to run the laser bucket over it again . Between that milking and feeding, did 19hrs yesterday and 13 today..trying to make the most of it before it all dried up as it topped out at 40c today....Looking forward to going to bed , although its still 38c at 8pm....may need a few more cans to attain a deep sleep...
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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  • Up to 25%

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  • 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

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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/
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