John Davies: Weather woes but some good nights, too

2 December 2010

I STARTED off the month with a trip north to the Nuffield conference, dropping off on the way to see the Graham family at Miller Hill, Carlisle, and then went on to Longtown Market.

There were a lot of lambs and 8,000 ewes sold that day, but there seems to be a lot of ewes being sold countrywide.

Does this mean the sheep flock will shrink again this year?

Then it was on to the Edinburgh conference which was really interesting with lots of good presentations from the scholars.

The highlight for me though was meeting the other FG ‘back page boys’ their for the evening.

There was a great deal of lively banter, mixed in with some serious farming discussion.

But I had to leave early next day to get back home for our Welsh Black group dinner in Brecon – and yet another good night.

Young cattle

The young cattle not for sale have been injected with Ivomec Super and trimmed with two blows down the back for a kind of a reverse Mohican – similar to myself and John (Obama) Yeomans, who came to our NFU County meeting and persuaded us to support the HCC levy increase.

We have been formulating our cattle finishing rations with Bryn from Wynnstay. It works out at £1.30/day/head, and with straw costing 25p/day, we need a better cattle trade to make it worthwhile.

I am one of the 2,900 Welsh farmers to apply for the Glastir scheme. Having not been able to access Tir Gofal in the past and with the use of slurry injection points, it wasn’t too hard to reach the required score. What happens with the next level, I really don’t know, but it’s important that lessons are learned on all sides.

We’ve been marketing lambs and cattle during the last week with the Land Rover and box on the road nearly every day – Welsh Blacks to RPF, lambs, cattle, cows to St Merryn, finishing the week off with lambs in a snowy Builth market. It would have to have been a poor trade to bring them home.

At the time of writing on the eve of the Winter Fair, salt for the roads and water for the livestock, are just two challenges organisers have to face. At home, we have similar problems, with stock currently housed up a hill in Pentwyn and down another at Gwarfelin.

POWYS

John Davies farms between Brecon and Builth Wells, running a 240ha (600 acre) mixed unit. Progeny from the farm’s 120 suckler cows are finished on-farm, as are lambs from the ewe flock. About 32ha (80 acres) of cereals are grown, and John also does some contracting work, mainly silage.