Lamb producer cuts costs and improve soils with forage crops

Forage crops grown at 1,400ft on a west Yorkshire hill farm are providing a virtually concentrate-free system for a flock of 650 ewes and finishing more than 1,100 lambs.

The hybrid kale and swedes grown by James Howard at Lane Farm, Holme, near Holmfirth, have also proved their worth as an essential part of the rotation used in the farm’s on-going upland grassland reseeding programme.

See also: Alternative forage crops

“We use forage crops to finish a lot of our own lambs from late summer through until May the following year. And when our in-lamb ewes come home after wintering away they go on to swedes,” says Mr Howard.

“On a hill farm like this, with land up to 1,950ft, we have a grass gap in March/April and rely on grazing swedes until lambing time. We don’t feed any concentrate to pregnant ewes.

“If we didn’t grow forage crops on this sort of farm we’d be very heavily dependent on bought-in feed for ewes and to finish lambs.”

Hill flock replacement

Lane Farm has about 100ha of land that can be cultivated, but even that lies at about 1,300ft. The moorland grazing use to carry mainly Swaledale ewes but all sheep were removed from the heather moor as part of a destocking agreement.

The hill flock has now been replaced with about 650 Easycare ewes – 500 are bred pure and 150 are put to New Zealand Suffolk tups. Some of the half-bred ewe lambs are retained as the farm builds up a flock of New Zealand Suffolk cross Easycare ewes, which are put to Texel rams.

Forage crop details

Although this is a high and exposed hill farm, Mr Howard admits he’s not a fan of feeding concentrates to sheep.

Despite its location, the forage crops are grown at 1,400ft close to open moor; finishing lambs are also allowed a “run back” on to aftermaths.

About 14ha of a rape/kale hybrid provides the mainstay of the forage cropping along with about 8ha of swedes. Late spring/early summer sowing of the rape/kale hybrid is staggered; drilling continues until late July and early August, while swedes are sown in June.

The later sowing of the rape/kale hybrid provides extended grazing; lambs were still on the crop in January.

“We want to avoid the rape/kale hybrid becoming too woody in the stem for the late-season finishing lambs, although most of the feed value is in the stem.

“When they are turned on to it they strip off the leaves leaving the stalks, but gradually they’ll eat the whole plant down to the base,” says Mr Howard.

Soil management

“For the rape/kale hybrid, like all forage crops, it’s important to have the soil in good condition. We take a soil analysis to make sure we’ve got the correct P and K levels – but this crop does like some nitrogen just to give it a kickstart. The land here is short of calcium so we do have to use lime.

“Old swards are treated with glyphosate and the seed is drilled into a rotovated strip that still leaves the turf intact. It drills the crop with one pass after spraying and gives us good establishment,” he says.

“When we go back to grass from a forage crop we use tine harrows with a seed box on it. Where swedes have been grazed late there’s usually enough soil on the grass to allow us to scratch the seed straight in.

See also: Look to alternative forage crops for cost cutting

“We’re now getting more fertility in the soil and the tap roots of the forage crops are helping the soil structure. Trying to reseed grass after grass without a rotation break crop had been proving difficult because we couldn’t get rid of the old sward,” says Mr Howard.

Leys are replaced every six to seven years. “We’ve been playing around with different seed mixtures but prefer the diploid and Timothy swards with clover. They produce a denser sward that’s more persistent and doesn’t need a lot of fertiliser.

“The forage crops help us make a better job of reseeding and provide us with extra feed. We’re producing dry matter at a cost of about 6p/kg. It means we keep a tight control on the need to buy in concentrates for finishing lambs and in-lamb ewes, although we do feed concentrates to the half-bred ewes that lamb in April,” he adds.

Management of Easycare ewes

Although the half-bred ewes are brought inside for lambing, the main flock of Easycare ewes lamb outside in late April/early May. None of the purebred Easycare ewes receive any concentrate pre-lambing.

Easycare ewes achieve a lambing percentage of 160-170%. “The lambs are very vigorous but we still take account of adequate wool cover when selecting flock replacements.

Although not having to shear Easycare ewes is a big advantage, we don’t want lambs to be really bare-skinned. They are up and suckling very quickly but they do need some wool cover for protection against the weather,” says Mr Howard.

Some Easycare ewes are producing six and seven crops of lambs. “Even when we’ve turned some ewes with single lambs back on to the moor and they’ve done well.

“We do very little with them at lambing time. We spread them thinly outside and virtually leave them to it. We don’t scan and don’t feed any concentrate at all pre-lambing. The Easycare ewes that come home in late February go straight on to swedes during March and April. It gives us chance to shut up the grass and have something to turn ewes on for lambing,” he says.

After weaning, lambs are moved on to aftermaths and although some will be drawn off grass by late August/early September, the rest are switched on to the rape/kale hybrid in September.

The first lambs are usually ready to be sold off the forage crops within six weeks, having gained about 6kg.

“We don’t feed any concentrate to our finishing lambs. We had 6t of sheep concentrate delivered in September and by mid-January we still had half of it left, even though we’d finished about 1,100 lambs during that time on 12ha of the rape/kale hybrid and some aftermaths.

“We strip graze it to begin with but then give them bigger areas because they seem to finish better that way.”

All lambs are sold deadweight at 16-22kg but aiming for 20kg-plus at R3 or better.