FARMING OVERSEAS

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27191, 7 November 1953, Page 5

FARMING OVERSEAS

Fertility From Grazing

HIGH-PRODUCING SCOTTISH FARM IBy H. STUDHOLME] (XVIII)

Captain J. W. MacPherson of Delny Farm, Delny, Easter Ross, is a striking exception to the old saying that the fairest prospect a Scot sees is the road south to London. Four years ago he took the road north from his birthplace in southern England and did not stop until he was within 60 miles of ti e north coast of Scotland.

Delny farm lies on Nigg Bay about three miles from Invergordoh, and the homestead, on gently rising ground, looks to the south-east over the flats along the shore, over the bay, and out past Cromarty* into the Moray Firth through the entrance to Cromarty Firth.

The soil of the farm is a sandy, friable loam, and is accounted rather light in that part of Scotland. In places the top spit of loam is 14 feet deep, and as it is free-draining and lies into the sun. it has advantages in the northern Scottish climate. The district has the further advantage that it receives some protection against westerly weather from the barrier of the Highlands which stretch unbroken to the west coast.

Most of the 400 acres of the farm is flat, and the rest is ploughable. About 220 acres are under crop each year, and 250 ewes and about 100 cattle, 30 of them breeding cows, are carried. Crops are potatoes, wheat, barley, oats, and turnips, with potatoes perhaps the most important. They are very largely grown for the big southern seed market, but a proportion goes as tables, or ware in the British term. The ewe flock is used for the production of fat lambs. It was originally of North Country Cheviots, big roomy, sheep, bred to a Border Leicester ram to produce Scotch halfbreds for sale either fat or as stores. Captain MacPherson has recently altered this policy, and will buy halfbred ewe lambs and rear his replacements. The halfbreds are put to an Oxford Down ram to give lambs which mature quickly at good weights. The lambing percentage is 150 or more reared, and last year the first draft of lambs numbering 320 head, went off early in the winter at 721 b dressed weight. It would be difficult to find anywhere a better-looking mob of ewes. When the writer saw the ewe flock, it was still all Cheviots, which in northern Scotland are brought to a very high degree of perfection, to which a generous carcase, even wool, rof

)bust constitution, and strong mother - ig ability contribute. It is unusual to see inferior sheep in that part of Scotand, and the Delny flock was up to ;he standards of the best.

The cattle are an equally important part of the livestock undertaking of the farm. The breeding cows are either Herefords or Aberdeen Angus-Short-horn cross, on which Aberdeen Angus bulls are used. The calves are reared and carried on until they are two years to 27 months old, and sold fat. Beside the home-bred cattle, a few are bought in to fatten to keep the numbers at about 100 all told. Cattle Fattening The object with the cattle, as with the lambs, is to keep them moving along as quickly as possible. The cattle are never allowed to lose their calf fat, and consequently they go off at weights of about llcwt at the highest quality grade, and are thus within the highest price range. As they are fattened and sold about a year earlier than is usual in Britain, they are a very profitable part of the farming. Obviously, with so big a concentration of livestock on a limited area, the livestock management on Delny Farm is well above the average. It is in fact very advanced, and is based on the theory, now in use everywhere in New Zealand, that pasture may be encouraged to produce to its highest when it is heavily grazed. Basically, the policy is to graze heavily in small areas, with the cattle following the sheep, and to move the sheep as-quickly as possible from one lot of grass to the next. The standard pasture mixture is perennial rye, cocksfoot, timothy, montgomery red and broad red clover, and two strains of white clover. It is the custom over much of Scotland to include in all mixtures 11b of rough stalked meadow grass. Under the intensive grazing at Delny it appears to contribute only insignificantly, and has been dropped. All the other constituents of this mixture produce well, and the pastures are strikingly vigorous. They are usually hayed before being grazed, and normally have three grazings in a season after the hay. Some part of the pasture is eaten down hard in the late summer and then shut up to give a good bite for the lambing ewes. They are given no nitfogen, but receive slag, and when it is required, lime. The pastures are rather open, because of the haying, and because they are allowed up for the cattle, but they are tremendously productive. Sheep grazing management calls for very heavy concentrations on small areas for a short time. The writer saw 250 ewes and lambs on a nineacre paddock which had been divided into three breaks with netting. The mob would be left on each break for three or four days, with a run-off on to the last break previously eaten off. Each break would therefore have sheep on it for about a week before being cleaned up with cattle and shut up for its next turn with sheep.

Quick Intensive Grazing Apart from its efficiency in making use of the pasture production, which with a well-distributed rainfall continues right through the season, the system of quick, intensive grazing has advantages for the health of the stock. Footrot is liable to be a serious trouble on strong pastures in a soft climate, but it has been cut down very materially under this system. The sheep are constantly moving to grass which has had a spell. A sharp watch is kept for footrot, and at the first signs of scald, the sheep are run through a bluestone bath.

With mixed grazing by cattle and sheep, trouble with worms has also been materially reduced. Normal practice over much of Scotland is to drench frequently and regularly. On Delny farm the ewes are drenched only twice a year, once at the beginning of the flush, and again at weaning, and lamb drenching has been cut down to twice, once at weaning and a second time before they go off grass on to roots for the winter. The quick shift and the cattle have given very good control of worms.

The intensive grazing management of the farm is unorthodox for Britain. It has been mentioned before in this series of articles that more British farmers are now adopting it, but there are few who have carried it to the lengths it has been carried at Delny. Captain MacPherson was perhaps lucky that he found in his shepherd a man who,'besides being exceedingly capable with sheep, was also one who was prepared to back his employer in a policy which to very many conservative British shepherds would have appeared dangerously extreme. The policy is to use intensive grazing to produce a larger number of lighter weight prime animals to step up the turnover of meat to the acre. The policy has succeeded to the full, and meat production is higher than jjhe average.

Yet the policy is not entirely without snags. The common rotation on Scottish arable farms is six years, with three years in crop and three in grass. At Delny the rotation is now four years in crop and three in grass, and so prolifically does the grass produce under intensive grazing that the rotation may have to be altered to four in grass and four in crops, though this would require considerable reorganisation of the farm programme. The sheep are wintered on turnips and some hay. Fattening lambs are finished off in winter on turnips, hay, and concentrates. The breeding cows are partly wintered on grass and turnips outside, and partly housed and given turnips and straw. Fattening cattle are wintered in courts and given turnips, hay, and concentrates. All this winter feed must be produced on

the place, as well as large quantities of straw for bedding the housed cattle," and for lining potato clamps, and lining the railway trucks in which the potatoes are shipped to market. The normal practice is to follow grass with potatoes and then with wheat, turnips, and then oats or barley sown with the grass mixture, but at Delny it has been found that potatoes crop better if they are grown on a heavily-dunged grain stubble. Therefore, the rotation there is grass to wheat, to potatoes, to turnips, to a cereal and sown down.

Some additional scope has recently been given by the purchase of a small croft adjoining the main farm. It was badly run down, but has the great advantage of being on a dry slope of light soil on the rise above the farm. It is being sown to good grass as rapidly as possible, and as it is warm land, will give additional early feed, as well, probably, as being very useful in the winter.

The grazing management of Delny Farm is along the same lines as the best of modern New Zealand ■ grazing | management, which obviously gives the same productivity and fertility in Scotland as it does here. Very few New Zealand f arms indeed can approach this Scottish property in the full use made through crops of the fertility engendered by livestock.