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South Coates Farm


Jdeere6910

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Decided to get in on the action, having some spare time now its dark early and that. Will probably end up as just a few smaller dio's rather than a layout I think.

Anyway the background, basing it on what I would do if I won the lottery/ home farm/ where I work.

South Coates farm is a 840ac farm consisting of 610ac at the main farm and a smaller place called Rossmoor farm about 1.5 miles away. The main farm is sandy and sandy loam and the other heavy clay which dictates both the rotation and stock on each farm.

The farm carries 120 stabiliser suckler cows (more detail later) and finishes all the progeny. I'll go into more detail with the cows as that's what I'm good at, plus there's too much arable farming on here.

Cropping on the main farm includes wheat, barley (winter and spring), maize, fodder beet and oats. The farm also has 70 acres of flood meadow grass (ings) which is used for hay. At rossmoor the cropping is grass, winter wheat and either barley or oats.

The fleet is a green sea using a JD 9880sts combine, 7920,7530,6920S,6125R and 3350 tractors and a Merlo 38.10 turbofarmer. The tractor fleet could see a change of colour in the near future though, there is no set replacement policy with the exception of the loader tractor (6125R) and Merlo which are swapped every 3 years due to the higher amount of hours worked.

Some contract baling and hay/silage making is carried out using a krone big pack 1290 baler and other grass kit along with 250 acres of combining.

I will add pictures of the various builds progressing when I get time, currently nothing is remotely finished so doesn't look too great

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Got some hanging basket liner from ebay quite cheaply to use for long grass, the top side will look good for mowing/hay but the underside where its joined to the membrane looks more like rough grazed grass. Will create a rig and furrow field for some cows using it.

So cows because arable is dull ;D The cow with its head up was a first attempt at creating a realistic suckler cow from the Britains friesian, however its not quite right as the chest isn't round enough. I think the second one is closer to what I'm trying to acheive. Got 10 of these to do and each one takes about 20 mins. A couple of calves as well, bit easier to shape than the cows.

South Coates runs a herd of 120 (ish) Stabiliser sucklers. The herd is spring calving starting in the 3rd week of February with the 1st calving heifers. Calving takes 9 weeks for the main herd which start a week after the heifers. The cows are calved in spring as the growth of the calf (hence its demand for milk) matches the growth patterns of the grass leys, a 9 week calving pattern means that all the cows are fed and managed in a similar way so efficiency improves.

The Stabiliser breed is a composite of different breeds developed in the US with a large focus on Maternal (mothering) traits. Some of these traits include good milk production, good fertility and low calf birth weights for easy calving. In general we find that for South Coates the breed suits the system very well and can be very profitable. The herd is closed apart from bulls bought in.

2 Blonde d'Aquitaine bulls are also used as terminal sires on around 40-50 of the cows. The blonde's are used to increase the carcass quality of the progeny along with their docile nature and short gestation length.

The young bulls are reared for the Morrisons yearling beef scheme, typically the bulls will go to the abattoir at an average of 630kg and 13 months old. They are fed Total Mixed Ration using Silage, Barley and Concentrates. The bulls are housed from weaning in October and go to kill from Jan-May. Ages range from 11-15 months depending on growth.

The herd runs at a 15% replacement rate of cows so needs 18 new heifers each year to calve. Due to this the best 22 pure heifers are selected based on a range of traits from both the mothers performance and their growth. From these 22 heifers, 20 are expected to be in calf 21 days after the turn out of the bulls in May when they are 13-15 months old. The remaining 4 will be sold on. All the other heifers are finished between 15 and 18 months. They are also fed TMR but with a higher proportion of forage (Silage, straw, fodder beet) in order to achieve a larger frame and less fat.

The heifers are reared at Rossmoor farm and return here for their second winter before they calve at 23-25 months old. In this period they are fed wholecrop silage and minerals until calving. Once calved they are fed TMR to encourage milk production and further growth, at calving the heifer should be 85% of mature size so requires more quality feed than the equivalent cow.

 

 

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I   like the detail Pat , loving the thought gone into the calving patterns , Were on the same sort of basis ,  with our herd , with Genus in AI ing all our milkers and a catchment bull in with the low yielders picking up any scraps leaning towards selling off the calves from which the bull has sired . All our heifers have been brought forward to calve a bit earlier than yours as we were convinced by our nutrishonist to calve slightly younger heifers as ours were well grown and had good stature to cope with an earlier calving . Enough babbling liking the story Pat

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5 hours ago, paulali said:

nice storyline Pat and nice use of the hanging basket liner,will be watching this

Thank you Paul, it was layouts like yours that encouraged me to have a go at my own.

4 hours ago, Stabliofarmer said:

Nice to see some dedication going into the cows Pat rather than just using ones off the shelf. They look great so far, very in depth storyline too.

Cheers James, I'm not much more than a steering wheel attendant with machinery but cows are my thing so I thought it might make a good topic. Especially when there's some excellent dio's detailing modern arable farming and contracting methods, the same could be applied to cattle. If someone finds it half as interesting as me/learns something then it was more than worth it.

1 hour ago, tractorboyjules1977 said:

I   like the detail Pat , loving the thought gone into the calving patterns , Were on the same sort of basis ,  with our herd , with Genus in AI ing all our milkers and a catchment bull in with the low yielders picking up any scraps leaning towards selling off the calves from which the bull has sired . All our heifers have been brought forward to calve a bit earlier than yours as we were convinced by our nutrishonist to calve slightly younger heifers as ours were well grown and had good stature to cope with an earlier calving . Enough babbling liking the story Pat

Babblings great when its about cows! Working on a block calving dairy has given me a good insight into calving large numbers of cows/the problems it causes. I'd like to move into beef in a few years time and use the technical dairy knowledge on sucklers, so hopefully I'll be able to use this as a template. As for AI, it really can't be beaten for dairy, provided your heat detection is good, do you run any pedometers/collars for bulling activity? 

I would't disagree with your nutritionist on calving dairy heifers at 22 months, its the way forward provided they are suited to fast growth. At a guess Holsteins/Holstein-Friesians?

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Looking forward to a livestock diorama pat, as has been said, it's a welcome change from the large scale arable men. I think you have a new breed of cattle there, British blue-tac! 

Id have to disagree with your views on calving heifers under 2 but that is an argument for another time. 

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42 minutes ago, Pete said:

Nice story line to follow Pat. Look forward to more updates.

Thanks Pete, plan to update more info on the cattle as I go on

21 minutes ago, mb86 said:

Looking forward to a livestock diorama pat, as has been said, it's a welcome change from the large scale arable men. I think you have a new breed of cattle there, British blue-tac! 

Id have to disagree with your views on calving heifers under 2 but that is an argument for another time. 

British blue-tac, I love it. Now to see if I can register them with BCMS.

Always good to hear different opinions Martin, makes life interesting

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2 hours ago, Jdeere6910 said:

Cheers James, I'm not much more than a steering wheel attendant with machinery but cows are my thing so I thought it might make a good topic. Especially when there's some excellent dio's detailing modern arable farming and contracting methods, the same could be applied to cattle. If someone finds it half as interesting as me/learns something then it was more than worth it.

Definitely interesting, never been round an arable farm but nosied about every type of dairy and beef farm from hand milked 10 cow small holdings to 50-60 herd's just scrapping a living to the million pound 500+ completely automated places so this is what really intrigues me and I look forward to learning plenty more from this topic. Will you be making any sheds for these bits of diorama?

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yeah Pat were mainly all Holsteins/freisans  ,have gone down the route of montbelliards , brown swiss , everyone to there own and there surroundings , interesting insight to try something different to make the best you can achieve , things always evolving especially in this area as being down the road from Bakers @ rushywood farm , haselbury plucknett milking over 1800 cows ! as to the bulling heifers there are all AI'd aswell , marked with chalk daily , seems to be working at the moment !!!! Our heifers have now finished being AI'd and are all housed for the winter with a young Hereford bull catching anything that doesn't hold in calve .

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21 hours ago, Stabliofarmer said:

Definitely interesting, never been round an arable farm but nosied about every type of dairy and beef farm from hand milked 10 cow small holdings to 50-60 herd's just scrapping a living to the million pound 500+ completely automated places so this is what really intrigues me and I look forward to learning plenty more from this topic. Will you be making any sheds for these bits of diorama?

I'd like to make some sheds, it will come down to time I guess. I'll see how the fields and cows go first

8 hours ago, tractorboyjules1977 said:

yeah Pat were mainly all Holsteins/freisans  ,have gone down the route of montbelliards , brown swiss , everyone to there own and there surroundings , interesting insight to try something different to make the best you can achieve , things always evolving especially in this area as being down the road from Bakers @ rushywood farm , haselbury plucknett milking over 1800 cows ! as to the bulling heifers there are all AI'd aswell , marked with chalk daily , seems to be working at the moment !!!! Our heifers have now finished being AI'd and are all housed for the winter with a young Hereford bull catching anything that doesn't hold in calve .

I'm quite impressed by the Monty as a 1st cross from Holstein tomake a nice robust cow for high yields. I wouldn't fancy chalking heifers every day, wouldn't tail paint be better?

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14 hours ago, Jdeere6910 said:

I'd like to make some sheds, it will come down to time I guess. I'll see how the fields and cows go first

I'm quite impressed by the Monty as a 1st cross from Holstein tomake a nice robust cow for high yields. I wouldn't fancy chalking heifers every day, wouldn't tail paint be better?

Yeah Pat I would of thought paint would be better but with genus doing all the marking seems to be the way they do things .They seem to have an endless supply of chalk everyweek !!!

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9 minutes ago, Oakley Farms said:

What a refreshing change to read this, you have some great knowlege and background detail, i mean i hate cows and iv really enjoyed reading it! Excellent start so far Pat

tell me about it! I have to wave a stick round on a Saturday so I can get on with pheasant feeding! ha ha!

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On 11/24/2015, 10:06:40, Oakley Farms said:

What a refreshing change to read this, you have some great knowlege and background detail, i mean i hate cows and iv really enjoyed reading it! Excellent start so far Pat

Thanks for the comments Alex, glad you enjoyed reading it

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Done a bit more today since I had a day off work and had got some bits from HLT.

Going to chop the base board down a bit but will have a track at the front where the landy is. Have gone for a rigg and furrowed effect using some folded newspaper under the hanging basket liner (not shown very well in the photo). HLT water trough with the pipe coloured blue, this will get some soil around it to show compacted area. The two different grass areas will have an electric fence to divided them as the field will be strip grazed, haven't yet got the join between them right. HLT gate in and got the fencing team on the job using bbq skewer fence posts.

Finally I was going to cut the board next to the right hand side hedge but then I thought if I add some soil then it can be used as a arable field. 7530 and Horsch to demonstrate

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  • 1 month later...

Done a bit more today. Got the worlds worst fencing contractors in (me) for some dodgy crooked fencing, and started to make a concrete sleeper track for the front, the rest of the track will be stone when I get round to it. Going to trim down the board for ease of movement. Also fattened up some Britains Charlies ready for painting

Real sleeper track for comparison.

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