Articles
Managing The Transition Onto Forage Crops
It takes around three weeks for rumen bugs to adapt to a change in diet. If we change diet abruptly, the rumen struggles to cope and digestive upsets occur such as bloat, acidosis and/or loss of performance. If done badly, you can put the livestock off eating the crop altogether and, in severe cases, farmers have lost livestock due to poor transitioning.
Read More >
Stubble Management for Grass Weed Control
There is not a single prescriptive course of action given there are so many farming and cropping systems each with differing objectives and timescales but, where stubble management is used for early grass weed control, certain principles in particular stale seedbeds (under the right conditions) can be effective in reducing the seed bank.
Read More >
How should I sell my grain?
How should I sell my grain? When selling grain, growers have a range of different options – with much depending on the individual’s attitude to risk. Growers are always keen…
Read More >Disbudding Calves
Disbudding calves is a common management procedure on many beef and dairy farms. Horns pose as a potential welfare issue to cattle as well as being a potential safety risk to farmers.
Read More >Rumen Drinking in Calves – What is it and how to avoid it?
Rumen drinking is one of the main causes of mortality that SRUC vets see in dairy calves. It can be the sole cause of death or a predisposer to other…
Read More >
Buying In An Older Stock Bull – What You Need To Know
Common practice when buying a new stock bull is to buy a young bull through a market or to buy a young bull directly from the breeder on farm. However, there is also increasing demand for older, mature stock bulls. There several advantages of opting to buy an older stock bull.
Read More >
Winter Wheat – What to look for in Varieties for 2022 Harvest
The distilling and soft feed varieties feed our main markets in Scotland and include some of the highest yielding examples in trials, but varieties for feed, biscuit and milling markets can include some useful agronomic traits as well as diversifying markets a bit. Some of the key varieties to consider are summarised in the article.
Read More >
Winter Barley Variety Choices
There has been really good progress in yield potential in some of the newer two and six row winter barley options for Scotland. Other agronomic traits are worth looking at too. Some carry specific weaknesses to key disease or differ markedly in standing strength. Early maturity can be important and we have also marked a few as doing particularly well on heavy soils.
Read More >
Establishing Forage in a Standing Crop
To boost winter forage supplies, there is an option to broadcast fast growing crops such as stubble swedes, rape or hybrid brassicas in to standing arable crops now. This would ideally be done 10 days prior to harvest.
Read More >
Covid contingency planning for ‘minor-but-disruptive’ event
As the Covid-19 vaccination programme rolls out we find ourselves moving into a new phase of disruption to our lives. This is one where the symptoms of infection are less…
Read More >Sign up to the FAS newsletter
Receive updates on news, events and publications from Scotland’s Farm Advisory Service