Wealden Times | WT163 | September 2015 | Education supplement inside

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Gardens
Fables
From
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Jane looks ahead
to autumn...
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Gardens
wet winter months ahead. It’s the Squirrel Nutkin mentality,
FTA carpentry pathfinder WT163.indd 119/08/2015 GranddadRobDesignsWT161.indd 10:58
1 18/06/2015 14:31
agnet Media Limited, PO Box 287, Uckfield, East Sussex, TN22 9EDI love it, and if you’ve got it you’ll know what I mean.
2 2885 or GARDEN 01825 873254 DESIGN - Fax: 01825 | LANDSCAPING
508309 - Email: This year has been a very good year
kim@magnetpublications.com
for grass and everyone’s
made plenty of hay. At Coopers Farm, with 15 cows, their
calves, the yearlings and the bull we usually go through about
VAT 10 No. big 929 bales 7920 a week. 74 In a normal year – if such a thing exists
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THE ESSENCE OF FINE
BRITISH LAWNS
For further information please phone 01424 773096
or e-mail: battlemowers@btconnect.com www.battlemowers.co.uk
visit our showroom at The Granary, Station Rd, Battle. TN33 0DE
Aaaagh how time flies. That bonfire smell is in the air as
another busy summer comes to an end and it’s always
good to see the barns full in preparation for the cold and
VAT No. 929 7920 74
any more – we would bring the cows in at the beginning
of December and turn them out again at the beginning
of May, which by my calculations is about 200 bales.
We’ve made 216 bales this year so it would be close, but we’re
DATE: planning 6 March to have fewer 2015animals in the yard this winter. We’re going
to sell some of the yearlings as stores. Selling beef cattle is quite a
complicated
FROM:
business but in essence there are three types of sale.
Kim
The first would be a breeding sale where farmers buy and
2015 GARDENEYE.CO.UK 01797 260451 | 07831 868848
sell cows, replacement heifers (young females) and bulls. This
may just be for standard farmyard fare, known as a commercial
sale or it may be a pedigree sale for a particular breed in which
vise any corrections to this copy by 16 March. If we case,
do rather
not quaintly
hear the cattle are sold in guineas (guinea =
from
GardenEyeWT156.indd 1 07/01/2015 11:22
copy is correct and will publish the advertisement as £1.05 for the uninitiated). I’m always amazed that this is still
shown.
allowed to happen; you might think Trading Standards, when
not worrying about pounds and ounces, pints and yards, would
be down like a ton of bricks on such an archaic practice.
The next sort of sale would be for fat – otherwise
known as finished – cattle. This is where the butchers –
or more likely the supermarket buyers – go to buy cattle
to kill and eat. These cattle will stand on a weighbridge
as they enter the ring and are sold by weight. Currently
a good steer will sell for just over £2/kg liveweight.
The third type of sale is for store cattle. These are animals
born to beef cows (known as suckler cows to differentiate them
from dairy cows), usually in the spring and then sold any time
from weaning onwards to be fattened by the buyer. The Weald,
with its multitude of grassland farms, has traditionally produced
a good supply of store cattle which are much in demand
from the big arable farms in East Anglia for two reasons.
Firstly they grow the barley, which is currently selling at
15% less than last year (not just the dairy boys who are having
a hard time), so it makes sense to feed it to their own cattle
rather than sell it. Secondly, and more importantly they need
the manure. However much fertilizer you apply to grow arable
crops it still needs a good supply of the brown stuff to enrich
the soil. So you buy a store, keep it over the winter in a yard full
of straw (your own) eating barley (your own) and hey presto
come the spring you have a finished bullock and a pile of dung.
Happy days (as long as the price for finished cattle holds up!)
Follow Jane on Twitter @coopers_farm
BattleMowersWT160.indd 1 11/05/2015 12:05
155 www.wealdentimes.co.uk