Ewen Campbells November 2014 column in Oban Times November has certainly been wet – and not only for us at SRUC’s Kirkton & Auchtertyre farms! We had 229 mm of rainfall (nearly the height of an A4 sheet of paper!!) over 4 days at the end of October, resulting in the river flooding many of our inbye fields and washing away part of a new track we had built alongside the river. It also left some of our fences flattened and our sheep rather wet. Unbeknown to us in advance, we had also arranged to hold our Public Open Day, as part of a Scottish Government funded series of SRUC events, on Sunday 26th October – which unfortunately turned out to be one of the wettest days of that 4 day period. However, despite the weather being truly horrendous, with sheets of driving rain blowing in horizontally, up to 40 local hardy folk came out, all really intrigued to find out about the future of farming and what we were up to on the research farms. It was great to see so many folk interested in the work here at Kirkton and Auchtertyre, but next time we will try and arrange better weather! Those who made it through the rain were able to see and discuss how drones (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) can help with a wide variety of research data collection; take part in a demonstration of our sheep weighing equipment, which links to the Electronic Identification tags on the sheep and can record the weights of 480 sheep in 60 minutes; and see a methane detector in action and discover how much methane an animal (or human!) is producing. Visitors also had the opportunity to find out about hidden wildlife, heard more detail about the history of farming in the local area over past centuries and get hands-on with some wood based crafts. So, whilst a few outdoor based activities had to be cancelled (in particular my sheep dog demonstration) there was still plenty going on in the sheds to keep people busy. More recently we had a visit from a number of the livestock farmers who are operating three of the four new Highland Focus Farms under the Scottish Government funded Farming for a Better Climate programme. Their visit coincided with a lull in the wet conditions, so we were able to ensure that they saw and discussed with us the full range of the research we are doing here under our grassland improvement work and long-term sheep breeding and systems projects. We also showed them how we use technology on our farms to help improve farm efficiency. There was a good buzz among everyone on the day and I think what we are doing here gave them some good ideas to implement on their own farms. Hopefully, they’ll spread the word among other farmers and we look forward to working closely with these Focus Farms in the future. In the midst of all this, I have also been very busy with getting the rams and ewes ready for tupping time. We have colour-taped the horns of all our rams and ewes so that we can keep track of which ram is in with which group of ewes and ensure that they all remain in the correct fields. We have also weighed and body condition scored the ewes to check they were in ideal condition before mating starts. The rams have been put with the ewes this week, and will stay with them until the end of December. Hopefully the weather and the grass will be in good condition, meaning our ewes will all be pregnant with lambs for next year. And so another year in the sheep farming calendar begins!
Posted on: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 16:58:37 +0000
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