On-Farm Lamb Trial Puts Individualised Parasite Control to the Test
Targeted worming trial for lambs
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Livestock on Farm
Is Resting Your Pastures Always Best for Soil Health? New Science Says It’s Complicated
For decades, a common piece of advice for boosting soil health and fighting climate change has been to rest grasslands by removing grazing animals. The thinking is straightforward: less grazing means more plant growth, and more plants should mean more carbon stored in the soil. Many environmental programmes and carbon-credit schemes are built on this
Pasture farming boosts soil health and biodiversity
A low input, grass-based approach to sheep and dairy farming is producing delicious food and benefitting the soil and wildlife on two Pasture for Life farms. Former Pasture for Life director Sara Gregson paid them a visit Sheep farming in Kent Fidelity Weston has run her family’s 82-hectare mixed farm near Sevenoaks since the early
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Farmer Focus – Anna Jackson
A positive outlook So far this year we have lambed on a viable grass crop, had a second crack at boats (beans and oats) and campaigned for the future of farming. When I say it’s been a busy year already, it’s been a busy year already. We have a tendency as a farm to over
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Pasture for life growing on many fronts
Pasture for Life, which champions the restorative power of grazing animals, continues to go from strength to strength with ambitious targets of hitting 5,000 members farming one million hectares by 2029. Last year saw 208 events delivered and 93 farmers trained as grazing mentors helping 166 mentees. There was activity across England, Scotland and Wales,
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Ecoacoustics – a new underground horizon for soil health
Following on from a farm trial undertaken by Andy Cato’s Wildfarmed farms, (as mentioned in our Farmer Profile issue Nov’ 24) we’re drilling down (pardon the pun) into the technology behind a new technique for measuring soil health – ecoacoustics. Ecoacoustics is an emerging science which investigates natural and anthropogenic sounds and their relationship with
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Data driven sheep management
A change in circumstances meant Herefordshire-based mixed farmer, William Cawley, had to reassess his system to adapt to changes being made by his landlord. Leading to an overhaul of his current sheep enterprise, Mr Cawley now prides himself on a data-driven approach to on-farm decision-making. Mr Cawley runs a successful mixed farm enterprise across Croft
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Turning soil, crop and cow health around on tricky land
A move towards biological farming is setting one mixed farm up for a better future. Sara Gregson reports Flood water in the lowest lying fields of Brook Farm, Repton in the East Midlands can hang around for months at a time and is a challenge for crops and animals alike. Father Andrew Sread with his
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The science behind bale grazing
As with many aspects of regenerative agriculture, farmers seeking UK-based research to confirm positive features seen in their fields from bale grazing, draw a blank. Sara Gregson reports on an Innovative Farmers Field Lab looking to address this. The list of benefits of outwintering beef cattle on bales of conserved forage that have been placed
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Spring 2024 Challenges in Grassland & Forage Crops
With the delayed Spring, forages stocks have been severely challenged, late turn out meant that already depleted Winter stocks were used, and grazing paddocks left longer than expected in warm wet conditions continued to grow so quality was reduced. This alongside being unable to apply fertiliser particularly in the heavier soils of the west has meant a late start to both grazing and silaging in the livestock sector. Even now soils have not recovered, recent silaging has been under challenging conditions in many areas trailers and foragers being pulled in and out of fields. This means that the silage is likely to be poorer quality due to late cutting, little or no fertiliser applied so yields not what they could be and the resulting damage and compaction to fields potentially having a knock-on effect for 2nd cut. Upon completion of VESS soil inspections around the country, compaction can be seen because of heavy winter rainfall, animal treading following a wet Autumn and Spring, this will mean that plant roots will be restricted from taking up water if the summer turns dry reducing the ability of the plant to endure periods of drought.Â
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