Our Cattle Have gone scientific!

It is all getting rather scientific out in the pasture with our group of finishing cattle.

We are currently conducting two projects at the farm alongside Cornwall Wildlife Trust and Natural England. The aim is to record data from our mob grazing system to show the effectiveness of finishing cattle on our 100% pasture system.

We know through experience how well our cattle ‘finish’ on our herbal leys by using a mob grazing system but there is very little to no scientific data collected in the field to prove that. We are hoping that by collecting this information we will inspire other farmers and give them the confidence to plant herbal leys and adopt a fully pastured system.

As a traditional beef farmer it is a huge leap of faith to remove all grain from the cattle diets and yes the majority of beef in the UK is fed grain contrary to public perception. Thanks largely to very misleading labelling in the supermarkets stateing that the beef is ‘grass fed’ then in small print its only for 180 days. Grass fed before heading into a finishing unit with the grain ration. Supplementing them with grain makes them grow faster and finish quicker. We know the worry of stopping that because we have been there! When we switched to our pastured system we had lots of farmers telling us we were totally mad, warning us that it would never work and we would never get a good finish on our beef.

Our cattle have never looked better, our farm is teaming with wildlife and our beef is award winningly delicious so hopefully we have shown that is does work but now we need the data to prove it…..

The first project is going to record the daily live weight gains of each animal in the group. For this we are using a ‘Ritchie Beef Monitor’. This is a water trough that the cattle have to step up into to take a drink. Once on the platform the animal is weighed. Each animal has been fitted with an EID ear tag, once the animal is on the trough the tag is electronically read and its weight is recorded. This data is sent through to the office so we can see how much weight each individual is gaining per day. The monitor is solar powered with its own solar panels and large battery storage. This data can then be compared to figures collected in traditional commercial beef production.

The second project is testing a ‘No Fence’ grazing system. This will allow us to virtually move the cattle’s mob grazing fence each day or several times per day. Each animal has been fitted with a collar and power unit (solar powered) they look a lot like a traditional cow bell! They work by making a loud noise which the cattle don’t like as they approach the fence line. It is a process to train them to the collars which we are just starting. For the first week (we are still in this) they are just getting used to wearing them but frankly they don’t seem to have even noticed! Next we will turn the collars on but still manually move the fence until they are trained and the electric fence is removed. These collars are going to enable us to mob graze our steeper and rougher ground which just isn’t practical for us to traditionally erect and move a new fences. If you would like to find out more about the collars here is a link to the website https://www.nofence.no/en-gb/

We feel incredibly lucky to be in a position to work with Natural England and Cornwall Wildlife Trust on these projects and can’t wait to see the results in the coming months and hopefully inspire some new farmers.