Happy new year to everyone! We made it through the Christmas and New Year without too many issues and compared to last year’s bad weather it has been a doddle!! There’s not a frozen water pipe in sight!

Having said that, there is still plenty of time for the weather to turn against us and in fact one of our students commented on how we are long overdue some horrible weather – just a little steady rain will do me!

The cows have been milking well over the last few months with approx 3,600 litres being produced by the farm every day. The drive we had on fighting any mastitis cases and foot trimming any cows showing signs of lameness, has really paid off as the herd is now one we can be proud of. The next stage in improving the overall herd wellbeing and health is to start looking at the buildings and infrastructure around the cows.

This week the ewes will be housed ready for lambing in March. They will be given a routine booster vaccination to protect the lamb against Clostridial disease and have their feet bathed to help prevent foot problems while housed. The ewes have all been scanned and those carrying twins or triplets will be penned separately and receive extra rations on top of the hay we made back in the summer.

At the same time as lambing we will be expecting to see a few of the Simmental herd calving as well. These calves will have been sired by Vanguard, our prize winning bull and we are eager to see how they look. With any luck they will all have show potential and be sold for breeding in the future.

Finally just to say congratulations to our herdsman Tom and his wife Becky Roberts on the arrival of a baby girl just before Christmas. We believe Poppy already has a pair of wellies and has been shown how to run the milking parlour!!

As October arrives, we have finished maize harvesting which yielded about 1650 tonnes of winter feed for the dairy cattle. The quality has been a little variable due to the very dry summer, but in all it should be of a decent quality for the cattle. We will get a sample tested for feed value in a few weeks after it has 'pickled' in the silage pit.
 

We have also been getting on with some autumn cultivation work. The students have been working through a large muck heap, spreading it on the corn stubble and ploughing it in preparation for next springs maize drilling. Our local contractors have also drilled some grass seed into a couple of fields. Doing this now might seem a bit late on the calendar, but the ground conditions and weather are still good, so we will take the risk and hope the seed gets going well enough before any winter frost stops it growing. If we do get a wet spring, we will be glad of getting it in now and not losing a month waiting in April for the ground to dry enough to get machinery on.

 
The tups (male sheep) have now been put out in the fields with the ewes. Our new Texel has teamed up with an older, more experienced Suffolk tup and they are running with 56 younger ewes that were bought this year. I am still very pleased with the purchase of this tup and will look towards keeping a number of his ewe lambs for breeding in a couple of years.

 
Anyone who has been watching Countryfile will know the trouble Adam Henson has been having with TB (tuberculosis) in his cattle and the knock on effects it has been having on the business. Our routine cattle TB test is coming up at the end of October and we have all our fingers and toes are crossed that we have a clear test. It’s better to be safe than sorry though,  so we are making plans just in case things do not go our way. Watch this space!!

On Saturday, we took our simmental heifer ‘Ambrose’ to the Moreton in Marsh show, where she came 3^rd in her class, which we were pleased with as there was some strong competition.

Things are looking good in the Simmental herd at the moment as another one of our heifers has just calved, producing not one, but two baby heifers, both of whom were fathered by our winning show bull Moretonhall Vanguard. We will grow these heifers up and add them to our expanding herd for breeding and showing.

It’s not just our beef herd that’s doing well, our dairy heifers are also producing some fantastic calves. Our local market is even starting to get queries asking if Warwickshire College has any dairy bull calves for sale, as they have been such top quality calves. I’m really pleased to hear this and it really shows the hard work, time and effort the herdsman and the farm staff put in to looking after the animals.

The majority of this seasons lambs have now gone to market, as well as some of our older ewes. My plans to increase the flock size are coming along, with the purchase of 40 replacement mule ‘theaves’ (un-lambed 2 year old sheep). 13 home-bred Suffolk cross theaves will also join them and go out with the tup (male sheep) in October, with a view to lamb in March. This will give us an increased flock of 320 ewes this year.

In addition to these ewes I have also purchased another Texel tup who has good conformation and size and some fantastic growth rate figures. I hope to retain his daughters to form the basis of a small Texel flock. We nicknamed our last texel ‘Terrance’, please let us know any name suggestions for our new one!

In the next few months we will be thinking about getting cultivations completed, start bringing cattle closer to home, giving all the ewes an ‘MOT’ before they go out with the tups and getting the maize harvest completed.

Busy times ahead!!

Written by Jonathan Clarke, Farm Manager

The past few months have been very busy at Nethermorton Farm, as the harvest has been in full swing. As the summer starts to draw to a close we can sit back and take stock of how the harvest has been.

We grew 100 acres of triticale (a cross between rye and wheat) of which half was cut in June and ensiled to be used as winter feed. The rest of it was then combined in the traditional way to provide grain and straw. Tests on this resulting grain have been very pleasing, showing figures similar to that of wheat. We have also produced some good silage which we are already starting to feed to the cows. Our baled straw was quite thick and plenty, and we were very pleased to get 265 big bales of straw.

The straw shed is totally full at the moment which is great, as straw is so expensive! However we will have to move some out in a month or two as the space will be required for cattle housing in the winter.

Despite the rain that has been falling recently, we have had very little grass growth throughout the summer. Although our 150 dairy cows have been outside, we have still had to feed them a full ration in the sheds. The good thing is that the milk production has been maintained, which will help to offset the feed costs.

In the spring I am going to try growing some ‘lucerne’ which is a legume crop; high in protein and energy. We hope to get three cuts a year for the next four years and I will make this into big bales for feeding to the dairy cows.

Term is due to start next week, so are we busy making sure everything is ready for the new and returning students. We are also taking one of our Simmental heiffers to the Moreton in Marsh show on Saturday, so we have our fingers crossed she brings us home a rosette.

Blog entry by Farm Manager, Jonathan Clarke.

The Lambs have Sprung!

Welcome to my blog. I am Jonathon Clarke, the Farm Manager at Nethermoreton Farm at Moreton Morrell. I have been the farm manager here for just under a year now and prior to that I taught agriculture at the college for six years. I thought it was about time I joined the community of bloggers to let everyone know what goes on at the farm. Please feel free to ask me any questions or post your comments.

As well as being an educational resource for the students at college, we are a commercial enterprise with a dairy herd, beef herd and flock of sheep. We supply about 3000 litres of milk to Dairycrest daily, which will appear in supermarkets within 36 hours of milking. We also sell pedigree beef cattle to other farmers for breeding. A good bull can sell for £1,250 or more.

March is a very busy time for us as our 300-strong flock of sheep give birth to their lambs. This year so far we have had over 600 lambs and are just waiting on the last 6 ewes to lamb which should give us 12 more lambs.

Lambing video on The Farm on our YouTube channel

During lambing season, which for us started in the last week of February and will end in the first week of April, we employ one of our agriculture lecturers as a shepherdess to manage the sheep sheds during the day, whilst at the weekends and evenings myself and Dave the stockman take over. The students will be very involved during the day but also work night shifts.

Here are the basic steps that are taken to ensure the sheep and their lambs are as comfortable as possible from birth to adulthood.

• move the sheep indoors – all the flock are moved into polytunnels and sheds so we can monitor them as they reach full-term
• extra feed – ewes are given high energy feed depending on how many lambs they are carrying.
• create pens for the mothers and lambs – once the ewe has given birth (ideally each ewe will have 2 lambs) we move them into a small pen so they can bond with each other. If one ewe has only one lamb and another has three, we will foster one of the triplets onto the ewe with only one lamb.
• move the ewe and lambs to a ‘mothering-up pen’ – these are larger pens where groups of 6 or 7 ewes and their lambs socialise together before going out into the main field. This happens when the lambs are about 3 days old. This ensures the lambs can find their mothers and are feeding well enough before going out into the fields.
• ear tagging – all the lambs are given ear tags to identify them. One of the tags is electronic, so we can monitor them and store the results on a database so we can tell how efficient and profitable the flock is.
• moving out to the field – after 3 – 5 days in the mothering up pens we move the ewes and lambs into the fields. Each lamb is caught and vaccinated against a dermatitis problem called ‘Orf.’
• regular checking – once they are out in the fields we check on them twice a day to ensure they are well and have not lost their mothers.
• during summer – they will stay in the fields until Autumn, when we start to pick out the lambs that have grown well and are fat enough to go for meat (yes I know it sounds horrible but our business is food production!!!!)

Now lambing season is almost over we are starting to get on with field work. Most of the grass has had its first dressing of fertiliser and we have started creating seedbeds ready to plant maize for cattle winter feed.

The last week or two of April gives us some respite before the busy summer months arrive.