Farmer focus, livestock: Iain Green

I was hoping for a dry autumn to shorten the winter, alas this has not happened. Recent rain has turned grass fields into quagmires. We have taken some young stock inside for the winter. Spring born calves have been weaned and their mothers have returned outside to stubble or grass fields.

At the recent Stirling bull sales, trade for all breeds was depressed. This reflected the downturn in prices of both store and finished cattle but, once again, the Simmental breed proved its worth as a dual-purpose animal and finished the week being the most sought-after breed.

Our entries were not carrying as much condition as the buyers were looking for, resulting in us only selling six bulls and four heifers to a top of £4200 and returning home with three bulls. I do feel as a breed we must not lose sight of weight gain and scale.

I recently sold the final batch of yearling male calves to average £724. Although this is a drop of £79 on the year, I felt with winter accommodation and straw in short supply, it was better to market these as forward stores instead of finishing them.

The recent pig meat price is still being maintained, but realistically an increase would be an advantage as it would be much easier to justify the high feed costs.

On a recent trip to the supermarket it annoyed me to see all the pork products from other European countries on display. These were cleverly packaged in similar colours to our own, because of the feed costs being high throughout Europe, the supermarkets must be doing this as a loss leader to try to keep the price of British pork low.

The ewes have all had their annual MOT, and by the time you read this they will have been introduced to their new expensive boy friends.