Matthew Milne from Elgin Charolais joins field margins column

Even although I farm in a relatively dry area of Scotland, the ground is saturated and grass growth is slow. Let’s hope for some dry weather and sun as nothing is better for man nor beast.

It is a great honour to be asked to write an article for The Scottish Farmer, a paper I’ve grown up reading since I was a loon. I am in no way a beef expert, but I have a great passion for breeding quality stock and hopefully some of what I write over the coming months strikes a chord with you readers.

The Milne family are sixth-generation Crown Estate tenants and I farm in partnership with my brother, Jim. The farm totals around 600 acres of which around half is sown in malting spring barley, with the rest being in grass or cereals for livestock use. My parents, Roy and Kirsty, still take an active interest, as does my younger brother Sam who is a self-employed agricultural contractor and fabricator.

Injuries do happen on farm

I run the livestock side of the business along with my wife Carolyn and our four boys – Rory, Archie, Gregor and Magnus. We run around 110 head of suckler cows, 40 of which are pedigree Charolais run under the Elgin prefix. The commercial cows are predominantly Salers crosses with the majority being bulled with the Charolais bull to produce progeny to sell store between the age of 9-11 months. A Simmental bull was purchased two years ago with the intent of introducing Simmental cross Salers females to cross back to the Charolais bull. These heifers are just away to enter the breeding herd and look very promising.

Kennieshillock is situated on the Moray coast about six miles from Elgin. The land is very light, free-draining, sandy and stony – we only sit about 60m above sea level. It is often referred to the Costa del Moray as we receive the shelter of the prevailing westerly weather from the Cairngorms, leading to our summers being hot and sometimes too dry.

The year 2018 will stay in my memory for a long time as we were burned to a crisp by early June with the farm resembling a desert. It seems a far-off situation at the moment but these extreme weather patterns are now becoming the norm and it doesn’t take long for the land here to go from saturated to appearing more like a desert.

The ground does allow us to outwinter much of my breeding females, most of which have the option of running outside every day throughout the winter. I have also started direct drilling stubble turnips mid-summer and strip grazing my spring calving cows on them in an attempt to reduce production costs.

The pedigree herd is split into two groups. Back-end and spring calving allows me to have a spread of ages of bull calves when it comes to sale time, and it also allows me to vary my bull power as I co-own most of my stock sires and the bulls can’t be everywhere at once.

My commercial cows are split into two group – the first calving from late January until March and the second from March until May. Calving has been relatively straightforward but I have encountered problems with my later commercial cows as a result of them carrying too much condition and the calves getting a bit too big and needing assistance.

With my commercial cows, I am very conscious that if I am helping more than 10%, this is too much. The Salers are an amazing breed and have the ability to calve themselves with offspring showing real vigour after birth and very seldom do I need to intervene.

Thankfully, I only have eight cows left to calf as just after agreeing to do this article, I had a wee altercation with a bull resulting in a broken index finger on my left hand. However, it has been splinted in a permanently upright direction to heal, so for those of you who have seen me in the passing, I am not giving you the bird – it is just the unfortunate predicament I have found myself in!

This was a timely reminder that we are not as invincible as many livestock farmers believe – and sometimes we do silly things not realising what a dangerous profession we are in.

Although we all have our woes with the weather at the moment, prices for our produce are good and it is great to see primary producers receiving recognition for the quality lambs and calves that so much care goes in to rearing. My store calves this year were a brilliant trade, averaging £1500 for bullocks and heifers with my top steer weighing in at 610kg at 11 months, selling to £1710 – what more could you ask for in a Charolais bullock!

Thoughts now turn to my next bull sale at Carlisle in May where we have four bulls and three heifers to sell, so if you are looking for a bull get in touch. All the best until next time.