Barnbackle at Lochfoot is one of nine new ‘monitor farms’, backed by £1.7m of Scottish Government funding and aiming to help optimise production in the farming sector.
The scheme aims to promote sustainable innovation and transformational change and bring together practical farming with good business practices to build resilient, dynamic farms focused on reaching full economic, social and environmental sustainability.
And the McCornick family who run the 500 acre beef and sheep farm hope to find solutions to help them tackle rising feed prices.
Richard, who farms at Barnbackle with partner Hayley Currie and his parents Andrew and Janice, has been looking at reducing costs and has started growing arable silage to feed calves through winter, as well as introducing rotational grazing.
It’s an area which he hopes he’ll be able to explore in more depth through the Monitor Farm Programme and said: “I’d like to find ways to develop the business, making it more profitable and sustainable. I’d like to reduce inputs such as fertiliser and feed, making the most of what I’ve got.”
There are 150 suckler cows, 20 store cattle, and 700 ewes at Barnbackle, which also benefits from input from Richard’s brother Craig and wife Michelle, who farm in Ayrshire.
Of the land, 440 acres are owned and the remaining is rented.
The cows are sim-luings and calve in spring and autumn. Most calves are sold as sucklers with only a small number kept through winter. Richard also runs a small heard of pedigree Charolais cattle, supplying local farmers with bulls to meet their requirements. Some of the cattle get out wintered on kale.
The sheep also winter on kale, as well as swedes. Ewes are texel cross mules and all the lambs are sold off grass.
Eventually the aim is to split the business, with Richard and Hayley running Barnbackle, and Richard’s brother and wife running the farm up the road.
He said: “It’s about making the businesses able to sustain the two families.”
As well as learning their own lessons, they will be sharing their experience with the public through a series of events.
And the first Dumfries Monitor Farm meeting will take place on December 15.
Monitor Farm programme manager Beth Alexander, from Quality Meat Scotland, said: “The benefits of the programme extend well beyond the gates of the individual Monitor Farms.
“An initial meeting takes place at each farm and these are open to the whole farming community, who are very much welcome to come along and join the discussions.
“We want the learnings and the example set by monitor farms to benefit all farmers across the whole of Scotland.”
