Livestock Farmer Focus FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Could lucerne thrive in wet Wales year round?We have taken full advantage of the sun and made a start on our harvest. Generally, we are pleased with the first cut in terms of quality and quantity, but… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Silage plans go out of the window under pressureBack in the days before silage, one of Orkney’s machinery dealers used to say he never sold many hay turner tines in a dry year. If that’s still the case,… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Controlling costs in services and labourUK pig producers are, sadly, accustomed to being hit by a crisis. Often these are unique to our sector and make us feel isolated from the wider farming industry. But… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Summer in the South, but not round hereIt has becoming a recurring theme, but the weather continues to be a challenge up here this year. Summer hasn’t actually arrived yet, but I’m ever hopeful of sunshine just around… FARMER FOCUSSilage delays cost dear but hay is in the shedI was rather premature last month with the silage report. We didn't get first cut done as planned, because our contractor chose to go to a large dairy farm instead… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Friends dig me out of silage nightmareWe’ve just been harvesting our silage during a week with ideal weather conditions that gave us and many others the opportunity to get crops in. Things started well. We had… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Next target is 1,000kg of solids a cowFirst, I hope you have found some of the things I have talked about in this column interesting, because after four years, this is my final one. Over this time,… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Once-a-day milking controls dry matter demandWe head into July and a moisture deficit has started to affect grass growth after a dry June. Average farm cover is down to 2,000kg dry matter (DM)/ha and daily… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Hope our leaders see sense on farrowing cratesI mentioned last time that a ban on conventional farrowing crates would be unthinkable, given the financial strain the industry is under right now. I feared the worst last week… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Reflections on the Kansas feedlot tragedyYou might have read about a huge loss of finishing cattle in Kansas caused by extreme weather. The beef industry took a “pretend this doesn’t exist and it will blow… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Sheep milking is just around the cornerBy the time you read this, we will be about a week away from milking. I took a big gamble and ordered the building before we had planning permissions. If… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Dairying – same game with new numbersLast month’s piece was written in the middle of taking first-cut silage, and I was full of optimism that it would come in dry. That optimism was ill-placed. The small… More articles
