Shropshire Farming Talk: Walford College Farm
It is probably very British to be talking about the weather.
However, the blustery days, sleet, cold winds followed by heavy rains, sun and warm weather are typically messing with planning field work, maintenance and animal husbandry.
We have just finished lambing, with an additional flock joining our Shropshire flock to give the students more opportunities to get involved. It has been very noticeable how the drought last year affected the flock with a slightly later start to lambing and higher than normal number of ewes not in lamb this year, despite the additional time with the Tupps and supplementary feeding. However, there has also been a higher than normal number of twins and female lambs, which will be good for our future numbers.
The grass has really benefitted from the recent sun and rain with consequent increases in growth and milk quality, with all of the cows and youngstock fully out since February and enjoying the grazing.
We ran our LIC Monitor Farm Open Day just before Easter with a reflection on the performance of our home bred cross bred Heifers, who have calved in Autumn and are now in milk against the performance of our original Holstein cows.
With constant pressure on the costs of production for calf rearing to producing healthy milk cows, monitoring the performance, health, lifespan, feed conversion and any additional costs are essential.
Our aim is to produce high quality milk from grass with healthy, long lived cows combined with low costs of production so that the system is fully sustainable and resilient.
The results were really interesting. We looked at milk production, income per cow, cost of rearing and production and maintenance per cow to then calculate profit and return per cow. The young first hybrid crosses were definitely holding their own with three of them in the top five and 50% of the top profitable cows comprised from the crossbreds.
We have recently planted 205 young trees across the campus, which will hopefully begin to give us some extra wildlife cover, nectar and berries and increase the biodiversity on site.
After Easter many of our students go out on work experience, with over 150 employers providing essential placements and additional opportunities for our students. There is still an enormous amount of work to be completed next term with marking and assessment continuing alongside the planning of several really great trips, industry events, guest lectures and workshops for the summer term.
This article was written by Bronwen Bray, Walford College Farm
