CARA Wales

We produce benchmarking data for our customers to compare to. This allows system and business weaknesses to be highlighted and opportunities identified. This invaluable tool enables CARA customers to move forward and improve profits. For further details please contact the office.

Cattle Keepers –

It is critical that you notify BCMS of movements within 3 days. Any late notifications could immediately mean a 3% penalty across all schemes, i.e. Single Payment Scheme, Tir Gofal, Tir Cynnal, Tir Mynydd, Organic Farming Scheme.

This is the most common cross compliance failure in Wales. If you require assistance in notifying BCMS, please let us know. We can provide a service to notify CTS online on your behalf.

Soil Assessment –

In the recent wet weather a number of farmers have been penalised for causing soil damage or soil erosion and not recording it in their soil assessment books. If any damage occurs to your fields in wet weather, record it in your soil assessment book immediately, even if you hope to rectify the damage in the near future. This should protect you from any penalty if you were inspected.

As of midnight on the 1^st of September the whole of Wales has been included in the bluetongue protection zone.  This means that the area that covered the South East of Wales has been extended to cover the whole country.

The extension to the zone means that farmers are able to move their stock from Wales to all areas of England that are in the protection zone. Stock can only be moved to a “free” area if they have been vaccinated under a vet’s supervision, subject to a 60 day standstill or 35 days if a blood test establishes immunity. Stock can be moved into Wales from all areas in the protection zone as well as the free areas which will come as good news to many people wanting to purchase animals at any forthcoming Autumn Sales.  Farmers are however urged not to move animals from areas of higher risk unless needed.

Farmers have been urged to vaccinate their stock as soon as possible as September is a month of high risk for the disease and it was the month when the first case was reported a year ago. The vaccine is available by ordering it from your vet.

The vaccine comes in 50ml and 20ml bottles, and is available through private veterinarians via veterinary wholesalers.

The wholesale “list” price is reported to be £22.02 for the 50ml bottles and £13.10 for the 20ml bottles.

The final on-farm price is likely to be around £27.50-£33.00 for the 50ml bottles (55-66p per ml) and around £16.35-£19.65 for the 20ml bottles (82-98p per ml) plus VAT, to cover the overhead, handling and administration charges throughout the distribution process.

Farmers are reminded that the vaccine will require a 1 ml dose in sheep and two separate 1 ml doses in cattle.

From September 2008 tax codes for many employees are going to change. The personal allowance (free pay) in 2008/09 for people under 65 will increase from £5435 to £6035.  This means that employees are now able to earn £116 per week or £503 per month before tax and N.I. are applied.  The new emergency tax code will be 603L. HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) will be sending out a revised Employer CD-ROM; 2008 (August), which will include updated tools for calculating payroll.  If you use a payroll system, you should be sent an update in August.  If you have not received the update yet, contact your payroll provider. 

The new tax codes must be used from the first payday on or after 7th September 2008. The table below (taken from HMRC website) shows the changes that will need to be made to your employees’ tax codes. 

 More information can be found on HMRC website: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/employers/epa-basicrate.htm

The last couple of years we have seen semen companies trying to find different ways of maintaining and increase their market share in this declining market place. The latest method of enticing new customers is to offer aid with heat detection and ultimately getting the cow back in calf. Different services are being offered from daily on farm service to cow collars which record change in cow behaviour.

Let’s face it semen companies make their money from semen sales (with a very lucrative margin) and will offer all sorts of gimmicks to maintain and increase their market share. All you as a dairy farm need is a cow in calf calving every year.

There are all sorts of issues which affect fertility from nutrition, health, minerals etc however it is widely accepted that the major reason cows are not getting back in calf is poor observation in catching cows in heat. Over the last decade herd sizes have increased significantly and number of cows to a man ratio with it. This has resulted in less time being available to give to the routine of observing cows and heat detection. There is also the added problem of the modern dairy cow showing oestrus signs for a shorter period. Over 55% of cows remain on heat for less than 8 hours and 43 % show heat signs between midnight and 6 am.

Paying for a semen company to help with heat detection and ultimately get cows back in calf is money well spent so long as it works and the fertility does actually improve. Many farms have signed on to one of these new systems but are not monitoring whether the results are any better than before. If you pay a professional to do a job then the least you can expect is that the job will be done better than you can do it.

There are various fertility indices used by the industry to measure and monitor fertility:

                                                                                    TARGET

Calving index                                                              <370 days

Interval to 1^st service                                                  60 days

Conception Rate                                                         60%    

Services to Conception                                               1.65

Heat Detection Rate                                                   70%

Pregnancy Rate                                                           36%

80 Day Submission Rate                                             85%

100 Day in Calf Rate                                                   95%

200 Day Not In Calf Rate                                            6%

All these indices have their uses. The danger is that your semen salesman and/or advisor will select the index which shows him/her in best light and not what is really happening. For example take the first two on the list, these indices only evaluate cows that have been served and exclude cows with no service date.

Challenge your breeding advisor today to ensure that the service you pay for is value for money.  If you do not have a strategy and your fertility is poor maybe you should think of employing an external service today. To review your dairy cow fertility strategies contact us at CARA.

Rural Affairs Minister, Elin Jones, launched a new grant scheme for disused historic buildings in rural areas at the Royal Welsh Show.
This new grant which is administered by Cadw, a part of the Welsh Assembly Government’s historic environment service. It offers grants for the repair and re-use of redundant listed buildings in rural areas which have been assessed as being ‘at risk’. There are over 2,000 listed buildings at risk in Wales.
The scheme aims to encourage projects which will propose a new or alternative use of listed buildings in keeping with their historic character. This will encourage regeneration of a rural area. For example, the scheme could:
• support the sympathetic conversion of barns or other redundant agricultural buildings
• redundant industrial or commercial buildings or redundant places of worship.
Grants, which are available to all owners, will be offered at 50% of eligible works costs. A sum of approximately £500,000 has been earmarked for the first year of the scheme.
It’s hoped that this new scheme will help to repair some of the most vulnerable listed buildings in Wales and improve and regenerate the appearance of run-down rural areas of Wales.

With more of your Single Farm Payment being swallowed up by increasing modulation rates, many farmers are now looking to recuperate some of this shortfall by joining an agri-environment scheme. Various schemes have been available over the last ten years including the ESA scheme (Environmentally Sensitive Areas), Habitat Scheme, Tir Cymen, and Tir Gofal. The latest scheme introduced was the Tir Cynnal scheme which has proved very popular with a range of farmers.

The Tir Cynnal scheme is open to all farmers as long as 5% of their farm can be classified as habitat i.e. broadleaved woodland, scrub, unimproved grassland etc. If the farm has less than 5% habitat, then farmers can choose to create habitats on their farm. One popular way of creating the habitat area required has been to grow a crop of unsprayed roots, such as swedes or stubble turnips.

Application for membership of the Tir Cynnal scheme is made annually on the Single Application Form, and payment is made on the anniversary of the agreement. Payment rates are as follows:-

0-20 ha   £45/ha                      £900

20-50 ha £30/ha                      £1800

50-100 ha £25/ha                    £3050

100-200 ha £5/ha                    £3550

Over 200 ha £2/ha

As part of the Tir Cynnal scheme you will be required to complete three management plans for your farm. These include a resource management plan, soil management plan and manure management plan. These will need to be completed before the first anniversary of your agreement and then updated annually to reflect any changes in farming system. These plans have proven to be very useful on a farm level by pointing out areas that could be problematic under cross-compliance, as well as highlighting over use of fertiliser on some fields.

The soil management plan states that testing soils on a regular basis would provide an environmental and business benefit to many farmers. At CARA, we now offer a soil testing service at £10 per sample. We have recently seen an upsurge in farmers undertaking soil samples to assess the fertility of their soils. The latest results received show that in general most P & K indexes are sufficient, however the majority of fields need significant levels of lime. Unless the pH of these soils is corrected, then the response to fertiliser applications will be limited. 

A lot of dairy farmers are unsure as to whether they will actually be better off under the current pricing, allowing for the increases in costs. The main cost increases are seen in the “3 F’s” - Feed, Fertiliser and Fuel. Assuming that the milk price for most has increased by 7-8 pence per litre, returns have increased by an average of £560 per cow.

Costs have increased by £70 per tonne for feed, £150 per tonne for fertiliser and 40% for fuel. The combined effect of these cost increase is around £320 per cow or 4.3 pence per litre. For the average dairy farmer, there should therefore be an extra profit of £240 per cow, or 3.2 pence per litre.