The Pasture Princess

Moving on to pasture's new!

As some of you may already know, today is my last day working for Innovis. Since graduating from Harper Adams in 2008, I have had a fantastic 3 and a half years based in Aberystwyth working with Innovis. Over that time I have worked with some incredible people; the staff at Innovis, staff at IBERS Aberystwyth University, many fantastic farmers and some really great people working in the industry.

I have learnt so much from working at Innovis, and with Charlie Morgan on all things grassland. It has been a priviledge and an honour working for such a great company with really exciting work going on driving the sheep industry forward. I have been fortunate enought to spend two months working on a farm in New Zealand with Inverdale ewes in 2009, and again to spend another 5 months in New Zealand working with farm consultants Abacus Bio earlier this year. All these opportunities have been given to me thanks to Dewi Jones, MD at Innovis, and to him I am extremely grateful.

So today is my last day, and I am looking forward to a nice Christmas meal with the whole team today before the Christmas break. In the New Year, I will begin a new venture working with the British Grassland Society. I am extremely looking forward to this new exciting chapter and all it will have to offer, but I hope to continue to remain in close contact with Innovis in the future.

I would like to say a big thank you to all of you that I have worked with and got to know over the past few years, it has been a real pleasure. This is not the end of 'The Pasture Princess', I will continue with my blog at the BGS and hope to bring some exciting new things to light in 2012. Thanks once again, and have a very Merry Christmas!

Kiwi sheep narrowly escapes death row!

A pet sheep facing death row in Gore, New Zealand this week has been saved from the chop! The sheep's owner had 7 days to come forward and claim the sheep from Gore pound, otherwise it would have faced the chopping block. The sheep's tearful owner turned up at Gore District Council to claim the sheep, and was granted permission to whisk the sheep away to freedom!

To read the full (entertaining!) article, follow the link below:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/6079742/Gore-sheep-spared-death-row

Pasture Princess features in The Times!!

Well you could say my 5 minutes of fame is upon me!

A couple of weeks ago I received a phone call from Harper Adams (where I studied my degree in Agriculture) warning me that I may have a phone call from Nick Wyke at The Times. A couple of hours later Nick called, saying that he was writing a feature on agriculture graduates in the 'Graduate Career' section of The Times, and wanted to write a case study on an agricultural graduate. After writing a graduate profile for Harper Adams to use in their literature, my name was put forward as a possible canditate. It was a huge surprise to hear that The Times had decided to write their focus on me!

As I'm sure you can image, I was even more surprised when I had another phone call last week asking if I would do a photo shoot to accompany the article! I spent 2 hours last Friday with Gareth Iwan Jones, a freelance photographer working for The Times, at Innovis farm Mynydd Gorddu. I had a great afternoon with Gareth, posing for photos out in the field, on the yard and on top of a stack of silage bales! Having seen Gareth's online portfolio and seeing glamorous images of numerous celebrities, I felt rather guilty dragging him up to a muddy farm at 800ft in November! To my relief, he insisted that he enjoyed the change of scenery!

So today the article features in The Times. Although I knew I would feature in there, it is still a big surprise opening up one of the biggest papers in the UK to find a full page photo of myself sampling silage, and then to see another photo of me and a write up about my career and my degree at Harper. It is absolutely fantastic to see agriculture getting the limelight and to see how much positivety there is towards farming and agricultural graduates. It was a pleasure to feature alongside such an inspiring advertisement for agriculture, and I really hope that people reading the articles are inspired to begin a career in what I believe is the best industry in the world to be involved in.

Ideal time to analyse silage

Every Autumn I spend a day sampling the silage made on the two Innovis farms. In the summer the shepherds stack the silage according to which field it came from, as there can be a big difference in field type, field closing date, pasture quality and wilt time while making the silage, all of which will have an impact on the dry matter and quality of the silage.

This year there were 11 stacks of silage to sample (some first cut and some second cut), as well as the pit silage. With the use of a silage corer a small hole can be made in the silage bales to get out a good sample of the silage, which can then be patched up after sampling. For each stack three bales are sampled to get a representative analysis.

The silage samples were sent off for laboratory analysis at Eurofins Laboratories, and the analysis results will be emailed back to me within a couple of days. Once we have the analysis of the different silages it is possible to decide what silage will be used for different stock classes, and which bales will be used early on or saved until lambing. Once the results have been returned I will post a summary on my blog to see how well the silage has been made this year.

Me sampling one of the silage stacks at Mynydd Gorddu

Sheep rustling...it's not unique to the UK!!

It appears that sheep rustling is not only a problem in the UK. This week two grass sheep sculptures were stolen from a display in Melbourne, Australia. The ewe and lamb were made out of steel, wire, polystyrene, coco peat and grass seeds, and were grown in a greenhouse by a local artist for a public art show running in Melbourne throughout October.

To read the full article follow this link:

http://moreland-leader.whereilive.com.au/news/story/where-are-ewe/



'Spot the difference' on the drive to England

Last month Dewi Jones (Innovis MD), Charlie Morgan (GrassMaster) and I presented at the Dalehead Foods and Waitrose event for their Welsh sheep farmers in Builth Wells. Our chosen topic was 'Preparing for the winter and spring'; a talk on how Innovis look at preparing for the winter months in terms of feed availability and stock demand.

Over the summer months I have travelled across England and Wales visiting farms with Aberdale ewes, and it was clear to see that there has been a huge difference in grass growth across the country this season. There has been an abundance of grass in the West this year, and in Aberystwyth we continue to have grass growth with mild and damp October days. With the grass wedge already built up and a lot of silage made in the summer, many farmers in the West are in a great position feed wise going into the winter.

However the story is very different further over to the east. This week I drove from Aberystwyth to Ludlow, coming back via Craven Arms and Welshpool. The stark contrast seen in the summer is still visible today, and once you head into Powys and near the England - Wales border you really notice the difference. The green pastures seen near the coast soon disappear, and are replaced by a grey landscape with stock in the fields being fed.

This poses the question as to how farmers in this region manage winter feed going in to what many forecasters believe is to be another frozen winter? Combine the feed shortage now with the fact that many failed to make much or any silage/ hay as there was no grass all summer, and many brassica crops failed to establish as conditions were too dry early on. The graph below is one that I drew for the presentation last month, showing the typical grass growth curve for the UK and highlighting how the West of the UK have had one of the best grass growing seasons ever, which is a dramatic contrast to that seen in the Central and Eastern regions.



Asda looks to Aber HSG to reduce carbon and improve farm profitability

Asda announced last week a new move working with British Seed Houses to introduce Aber High Sugar Grasses to the 13,500 beef, sheep and dairy farmers working with ASDA in the UK.

The new move is the first by a UK supermarket, and aims to reduce the level of carbon produced on farm and to improve farm profitability for the BeefLink, LambLink and DairyLink farmers.

To read the full article follow this link:

http://your.asda.com/2011/10/12/asda-s-sugar-rich-grass-to-confront-cow-carbon-conundrum

Suspicious looking cows!

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about the British Grassland Society research conference in Belfast and how much I enjoyed a tour around AFBI Hillsborough. I also promised to uploads some photos, so here they are!

I mentioned in the previous blog that a lot of work is being carried out at Hillsborough looking at methane emissions from dairy cows. The pictures below show the SF6 method of measuring methane emissions from the cows nose. A bolus is put into the cows rumen and lets off a gas called sulphur hexa fluoride (SF6). A small tube with a vacuum at the end of the cows nose sucks the air coming out of the cow. The level of SF6 measured from the cows nose can then be accurately related to the level of methane emissions from the cow.

Previously cows were put into a methane gas chamber (one of only four in the world) to measure methane emissions. Using either the 'neck colar' or 'back pack' to measure the methane emissions is an easier way to measure the methane emissions from the cows without having to put them into the methane gas chamber. From work AFBI have done comparing the methane emissions emitted through the SF6 method and the methane gas chamber there is no significant difference as the majority of methane emissions from the cow actually come out of the nose/ mouth as opposed to the back end as most people believe!

Welsh farmers make hay while the sun shines

It's safe to say that this has been an exceptional week! Temperatures reached 26C in Aberystwyth yesterday, 10C above the average for this time of year with night time temperatures higher than usual day time temperatures for late September.

From my travels over the past couple of days, especially from Bala to Aberystwyth this morning I saw a lot of silage and hay on the ground. This spell of fine weather has been great for those that did not manage to get all of their hay made with the rain that we have seen over the past couple of months. Those at higher altitudes seem to be benefitting the most, as they may have missed the last dry spell and are high enough to avoid most of the heavy morning dew that has been seen at a lowland level. 

With the exceptional grass growth seen in the West this year, for many this silage/ hay will be additional to fodder required over the winter months. Having said that, many are predicting another hard winter again this year, and if that is the case we will all be very glad of any extra feed that we have been able to conserve now!

Fantastic two days at the BGS 10th Research Conference

Last week I flew out to Belfast for two days to attend the British Grassland Society 10th Research Conference. Having presented at the event held at Harper Adams two years ago, I was keen to go again this year and was fortunate enough to receive a Stapledon Memorial Trust bursary.

Over 70 papers were presented this year, with topics including grazing management, grass and forage production, nutrients in slurries and soils, knowledge transfer and the environment and renewables. It was also great to see papers from Belgium and Finland, giving a different perspective to what is going on in terms of research in Europe.

An interesting part of this years conference was a debate between delegates on the R&D priorities of BGS going forwards. This gave everyone the opportunity to discuss what they believe should be BGS' priorities, and not surprisingly the main topics were food and water security and climate change. It was great to hear so many saying that communication between researchers and farmers needs to be improved. For me this should be key, as I attend events like this where there are very few farmers attending and hear improvements that grass breeders are making and some fantastic research going on at universities and research institutes. However, I always feel that there is little connection between this work and what farmers think they need, and in my opinion this is one area that really needs to be connected. It was impressive hearing of knowledge transfer to farmers from trials and research work carried out at Teagasc, with events being hosted by Teagasc with attendance of thousands of Irish farmers. This is definitely something that the rest of us should learn from.

One of the highlights of the conference for me was a tour around Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) Hillsborough. This included seeing some of the dairy cows involved in trials looking at how different breeds, age of animal and grass type impact on methane emissions from dairy cows, beef cattle and sheep. We also had a tour of the Biogas plant, where slurry from the dairy cows and grass silage is digested through the Anaerobic Digester to produce energy and digestate to be used as fertiliser on the farm. We also heard how biomass crops such as miscanthus and short rotation coppice willow are being grown, and how carbon savings are being made using these biomass fuels. 

All in all, it was a fantastic conference and a credit to BGS and AFBI for the work involved in organising the event.