Getting the most out of grass

Soil management

We have very sandy loamy soil which is very low in selenium and cobalt (because the cattle and sheep don’t have any other feed, we bolus everything twice a year). We carry out regular soil testing, use lime when needed (importantly) and no synthetic fertilisers, which leaves us feeling quite smug in the soil department. But the sandy loam doesn’t cope with a drought well and with dry summers becoming a regular occurrence, we have found great benefit in leaving the grass cover for longer (preferring cattle grazing than sheep). The ground below remains much cooler and remains damp, as opposed to the nibbled, hard, scorched effect you can have after grazing with sheep.

Nutrient management

Composting and taking better care of our FYM has been and continues to be an area of focus, it’s a limited resource and making the most of it is paramount. We are starting to learn more about the skill of composting - we do compost and turn it over, but it is a gap in our knowledge.

Varieties and alternative species

Historically the lower part of the farm was in a barley rotation, we did dabble with root crops for outwintering cattle and growing lambs on but cost and damage to the soil structure put a halt to this.

We’ve used quite a few herbal mixes - have done some reseeding with herbal leys (which include vetch, clover, cocksfoot, plantain, chicory).. They work well, plantain and cocksfoot particularly long-term. We’re going more into tall grass grazing so it’s a matter of working out what works well for that.... We have used herbal leys mixes with sainfoin and vetch - they seem to stay for the first year then disappear. Having gone down the route of doing lots of reseeding etc., we now direct drill into the leys.

Herbal leys have been good but we’ve realised that grazing our permanent pasture correctly is the better investment. Grazing in rotation has made us realise that there are huge advantages of having permanent pasture - it is that which comes out on top within our system. It responds incredibly well to an intense 24-hour graze at high density then a rest period - this could be 21 days or up to 120 days, depending on the time of year. We have noticed that we have far more clover (helping to fix nitrogen) particularly. We’d move the cattle then quickly spread plantain and chicory seeds using a fiddle drill. We’ve also direct drilled into pasture - we are always trying to increase our biodiversity. Because we have less sheep now, we have more docks and some thistle. It doesn’t bother us - we have come from the place of having a ‘perfect’ monoculture of ryegrass so have that insight.

Grazing management

We have white faced sheep - which are Aberfield crossed with a Lleyn. They can hack the system and looks after themselves.

The cows are Aberdeen Angus - the bull we use is from a breeder in Northumberland who breeds bulls off a grass-based system (we buy rams that are bred on a grass-based system too). They’re quite a small cow, have a calf every year, and again, look after themselves and the calves with little input from us… It’s more about if they can convert grass to meat that we’re interested in, rather than the breeds.

The cattle have always been rotationally grazed to help stimulate grass growth and avoid poaching. We have been practicing two systems - using a series of small paddocks (each less than 1 hectare), and a series of 6-acre fields, with cattle rotated on all of them on a daily basis. Our aim now is to have a big group that are continually rotated round the farm. We have 65 cows with their calves and a few other random young stock (about 140 head) in one big group moving round the farm on daily shifts.

We currently have about 54 cells, but it’s always changing - it’s important to make sure you move them before they get unsettled and there’s too much poaching. All the other fields (except one group of sheep) are resting during this time, soaking up water etc. The cows' trampling effect and the way they eat has a much more beneficial impact on the ground than the sheep. Sheep graze everything, they aren’t selective, and graze things very low.

We wanted to simplify and make it streamlined. By having less sheep and mixing them with cows, there are lots of benefits - when the sheep go on to ground where cows have been they always do better. It’s a cleaner pasture.

Our main enterprise now is beef - to make money out of suckler cows they’ve got to be out for a long time, so we have hay bales (see below) that are grazed in pods.

One of our big costs is straw. Last year we had two groups of 30 - bale pods. We’re moving away from silage - we think hay is easier and leaves less mess.

Our laying hens roam free among long grass around a mobile laying unit. This ensures no areas of grass is damaged through prolonged use, and a dispersed, low level of nutrient input into the fields from the birds’ droppings.

Integrating trees and hedges into the system

Trees and hedges contribute a lot to the farm in terms of shelter, providing browse for livestock, and increasing overall biodiversity.

Our land contains conventional blocks of mature and semi-mature forestry (as pictured below) that have been inherited from previous owners, and younger (planted within the last 5 years) strips of shelterbelt agroforestry that we have planted. Many of the 6-acre grazing paddocks also contain recently planted in-field trees. These are planted in groups of 5 or so saplings and protected by substantial wooden planking or in a smaller arrangement of a couple of species protected by wire mesh.

Moving the cattle and sheep around regularly showed us the way we wanted to farm - when we subdivided the fields, it gave us the idea of putting more hedges and trees in. We’re losing field in the farmer mentality, but we’re gaining lots of shelter and other benefits. We’re always looking for ways of putting more resilience into our system. We’re going to get drier summers and wetter winters - thinking ahead, trees and hedges are going to raise the value of the farm.

Our decision to develop shelterbelts was stimulated by the severe winter weather of 2018. Every lambing time is different - you can see sheep lambing against the new hedges - scientifically, it’s very difficult to say the hedges have saved this many lives… but you can see the impacts on the livestock when they can’t get shelter.

We intend that new agroforestry planting will eventually be able to be grazed by livestock. They quite obviously want to eat something other than grass. The other day the cows moved into a field that had crab apples on one side of it - they went straight down and frantically ate all the crab apples.

This year we’ve bought in a lot of woodchip to complement our bedding - when cattle are in they’re bedded on straw, which is expensive. Our plan eventually is to have our own willow or hazel we can chip (from hedges).

We currently have 2 sows who each year have 2 lots of piglets. They go onto rough bits of land and into wood (we pulse them through) - we need to have pigs in woods (they help rejuvenate) but the current infrastructure to do it right is expensive.