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sustainable and will eventually produce cows which are close to pure Limousin - which will not give enough milk from an all forage diet for well grown suckled calves.

Herefords Introduced
This summer, some pure bred Hereford females and a bull were introduced onto the farm. Some of the rougher grazing was not being utilised by sheep and the Herefords will be used to improve these areas. Initially the Herefords will be bred pure to build up numbers but the intention then is to produce Hereford cross replacements for the main herd on the lower land. The main concern is the size of the finished cross Hereford stock but output of finished beef per acre may remain similar if more, smaller cows, can be kept.
  Heifers have been kept longer than usual as there was a surplus of grass over the summer and they continued to gain weight. All the cattle have been marketed through Dovecote Park to Waitrose.
  During the monitoring of the Technical Development Farm we should be able to compare the performance of progeny from South Devon, South Devon x Limousin and Hereford cows.
Ken Stebbings,
ADAS Carmarthen

 

onathan, Eileen and David Williams have been farming organically for more than 10 years. The organic system is now well established and the increasing fertility continues to produce an excess of grass. The stocking rate is currently under review and changes are already underway. This winter, the suckler herd will increase from 60 to 70 head and the sheep flock from 800 to 1,050 ewes.

Breeding Policy
The technical group meeting in August discussed future breeding policy and was led by Dennis Chapple from ADAS Rosemaund. Organic standards allow up to 10% of a herd to be replaced from a non-organic source but the
preferred system would produce all its own replacements. This gives a strong argument for pure breeds. However, Dennis gave a figure of 25% for the improvement in performance resulting from
the hybrid vigour of cross- bred cows. This is a strong argument against keeping pure breeds!
   At Cefn Llech, the herd is based on South Devon cows which are crossed with a Limousin bull. In the past, pure bred South Devon steers and surplus heifers were found to be slow to mature and lacked conformation. Recently, some of the South Devon cross Limousin heifers have entered the herd as replacements; these are also crossed back to a Limousin. Obviously, this system is not
Over the summer 21 South Devon cross Limousin cattle have finished and were sold with the following averages;
Average carcass weight (kg)   Age (months):
Steers 310
21
Heifers 273
26
All carcasses graded either U2, U3, R3 or R4L.