Livestock Farmer Focus FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Night-time shenanigans to get second cut inIt was great to see Lewis Hamilton recently winning his first race for Ferrari. Unfortunately, I had to listen to it on the radio as I was cutting our second… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Piglet vaccine tech saves time and stressKeeping pigs on three different sites often spreads the workload well, with the pigs all being at different stages. However, sometimes it can be very full on all at once.… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Maize crop is motoring after a slow startOur June was extremely busy. The old adage that things will be easier next week never seems to happen. At the beginning of the month, I was worried about the… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Lamb price only fair considering long hoursThe 31 lambs we took to Welshpool Market on 1 June looked small and young. Nevertheless, they averaged 34.2kg, with an average price of £161.94. Two weeks later, we took… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Stock are thriving on high-quality grassJune was quite a month. We have had scorching temperatures, lashing rain, hailstones, thunder, lightning and a whole lot of grass growth. It has been a month of extremes that… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Rig lamb foils plan to tighten lambing periodWe’ve finished making our haylage and conditions couldn’t have been much better. It looks like it will be good-quality stuff, though we’ll get it tested before we start feeding it… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: June rain limits silage-making options in NIIt has definitely been a few years since I’ve seen this much rainfall in June – 100mm-plus in four weeks. It has limited the options for silage harvesting for most… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Gravity-fed water boosts grazing block supplyAs we see yet another prime minister quit their post, and with change at the helm of Defra, can it get any worse? I suspect it will, as we appear… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Strong grass growth prompts early ewe purchaseI am writing this sat by the pool in Sardinia, and what a lovely place it is. June has always been the time for a family holiday for us, and… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Cereals wowed this Welsh hill farmerThe closest I usually get to arable is our annual wholecrop harvest or complaining about the price of straw. But I was drawn to attend the Cereals event at Diddly… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Tough times for herds on less than 30p/litreWe consider ourselves fortunate to have our Arla milk contract. It has delivered a good milk price and provides opportunities – not quite the protection of a full supermarket contract,… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Spares fill pickup for daily cattle checksGrazing on the Salisbury Plain, our cattle can be quite far from the farmyard, so being prepared for all eventualities is key when we go out and check round. The… More articles
