Taking place at the end of August our northeast Walk & Talk took us to Cluny Farm near Forres in Moray.
Run by Robbie and Kirsty Newlands, Cluny is a tenanted 1,100 acre (445ha) upland unit. Here they run 180 head of Simmental and Saler cows and 700 Mule ewes with all progeny finished on-farm.
The day kicked off with an informal chat amongst attendees with some refreshments and delicious homebakes from Kirsty. Robbie then took us around the farm where we learnt about their system, designed to, in Robbie’s words, “keep things simple”.
We visited the spring calved cows and saw the quality of the calves at foot – all calved outside in a short block during the spring – and Robbie explained why outwintering the cows works at Cluny, with ground that can withstand it. In the winter, they are fed on a diet of forage rape along with straw and kept on the barley stubble.
We then convoyed over to the ewes where Robbie talked us through their sheep operation, lambing indoors in batches which they keep moving in a quick throughput cycle to keep enough free space.
Herd Advance’s Jilly Duncan Grant and Murdoch Duncan then gave us a demonstration and talk on the Stockman cattle crate and explained the advantages in terms of safety, time saving efficiencies, animal welfare and workforce issue mitigation and how we can use tech like this to support our own wellbeing in the work environment, lowering stress levels and workloads.
We chatted some more on the industry challenges we are all facing at the moment with some suggesting how they are overcoming these, which included Robbie telling us about the group chat he has with local farmers where they share the good and bad to stay connected and reassured that others are facing the same issues.
Finally, we headed back to the main farm unit where Alix Ritchie, Programme Director and Jock Gibson, Farmstrong trustee and local farmer butcher started off a discussion on the steps people can take to consider their wellbeing more often – it was a brilliant group talk with people giving examples of the kinds of the things they do to wind down after a busy or stressful day.
We finished off a great day with mingling over refreshments and tasty burgers supplied by Macbeth’s Butchers.
If you haven’t yet managed to come along to a Walk & Talk, look out for the next one on our events page.
