Quality Meat Scotland

outwintering cattle. However, with some careful planning and regular moves we’ve been able to successfully implement the system on our land, and if we can do it then any farmer can,” adds Mr Hedley-Lawrence.

“Just go out and try it with a small group by planning and doing the maths; you’ll learn from your mistakes and be able to tweak your plan so you are more and more successful each year with more cows.”

Arrowquip adds two new units to its Q-Catch mobile cattle handling range

Q-Catch 7416

Q-Catch 48

Arrowquip has added two new products to its extensive Q-Catch mobile cattle handling range, giving beef and dairy producers more options to improve cattle handling safety

Controlling the controllables

By Sarah Millar, Chief Executive at Quality Meat Scotland

Sarah Millar

When we’re firefighting with the immediate issues of an energy crisis and escalating costs of production, it can be difficult to look beyond the day-to-day. Where we can ensure we continue to progress however, is by controlling the controllables.

This has been our focus at QMS. We are thinking big picture but keeping our activity simple and targeted. Our consumer campaigns are now 100% digital, as this is where we are seeing the best engagement and allows us to easily flex with changing priorities and attitudes. Our consumer website has undergone comprehensive change to complement this.

A key priority has been meeting with our levy payers and stakeholders. Kate, our Chair, and I had a full summer of events and meetings across the country alongside the team and members of our board have been at the marts throughout the Autumn sales.

We’ve reformed our standards setting process and standard setting committee structure, based on feedback from the open meetings this summer. In a first step in this, we are offering greater transparency as we review the pig standards, adding in a new stage for producer feedback on the proposed changes before they are formally adopted.

We have also dedicated activity with schools around Tasty Little Pork Week and supported the industry initiative to boost consumer sales, Porktober.

The Industry Development team has taken great strides in its work including on meat eating quality and we also continue to progress our DNA project.

In January, we appointed a dedicated Industry Strategy Manager and Public Affairs Manager, Lucy Ozanne. This has paid dividends with a changing policy and regulatory landscape post-Brexit, a new agricultural bill in formation and growing pressure on the industry to respond to the climate crisis.

In the year ahead we have some exciting new developments for the Industry Development team and a change of focus following the publication of our Meat Eating Quality report, which we will be announcing early next year. Our marketing campaign has a new message, and nine new Monitor Farms were announced at AgriScot last month.

There is no end to the Ukraine war in sight, and it’s hard to predict what the year ahead will bring, but our core aim at QMS is to ensure that our levy payers have the tools in their toolkit to access high value markets and to operate as best they can.

and efficiency anywhere on their farms.

The new units – Q-Catch 748 and Q-Catch 7416 – feature the Q-Catch 74 Series manual squeeze crush along with the Easy Flow Adjustable Cattle Race in one towable unit allowing farmers to transport their cattle handling system anywhere work needs to be done. The 748 features an 8’ Easy Flow Race, while the 7416 gets a longer 16’ race.

Both units are manufactured with a first-grade steel top and bottom frame and feature a tractor tow bar and manual jacks. A five-year guarantee is standard, with lifetime guarantees on the crush’s rubber floor, rump fingers, squeeze locks and headgate locks.

Key features The Q-Catch 74 Series is the mid-range cattle crush in the Arrowquip manual squeeze offerings. It features the 3E Q-Catch Head Gate with a vertical bar design that allows light to enter the front of the crush when the gate is closed to draw cattle forward without force. The infinite lock headgate and parallel squeeze will secure in any position – allowing a small calf or a large bull to be worked on without the need for adjustments. A sliding headgate handle allows the headgate to be operated anywhere along the working side of the crush, enabling operators to run the rear sliding door and headgate simultaneously.

Other features of the Q-Catch 74 Series crush include multiple access points with full-side horizontal opening top and bottom doors which can be pegged together and operated as one, removable top gates, and a drop-down and removable needle access door for TB testing. It also has a textured rubber floor that features a lifetime guarantee. The 748 features a single 8’ adjustable race, while the larger 7416 uses two 8’ sections to create a 16’ length. Sheeted sides with removable top blinder panels keep cattle flow moving forward by preventing cattle from being distracted from activity outside the race. A simple pull rope allows the race width to be widened or narrowed to suit different sizes of stock.

An optional weigh platform kit fits within the race and supports Tru-Test and Gallagher loadbars.

Better Grazing project yields impressive results

Improved grassland and grazing management can cut input costs while maintaining, or even improving, cattle growth rates, according to a study.

The three-year Better Grazing project – run by FAI Farms and McDonald’s UK & Ireland – looked at the benefits of improving grassland and grazing management on four beef farms in the McDonald’s supply chain.

Karl Williams, operations director at FAI Farms, says the success of implementing better grazing management was recognised by each farmer involved in the study.

“The benefits have been clearly evidenced by a reduction in purchased feed and synthetic fertiliser, while being able to increase production and output,” adds Mr Williams.

“Better grazing management has also led to farmers feeling more in control and able to take proactive management decisions, which has helped to reduce labour requirements.”

He says grazing management was improved by simplifying systems so that fewer groups of cattle were grazed, meaning more paddocks and fields were available for grazing.

“This reduced the time that paddocks were grazed and improved rest periods, leading to increased pasture growth,” adds Mr Wiliams.

“This meant a reduced need for artificial Nitrogen fertiliser, an extended grazing period, a reduction in purchased feed, and a reduction in the farm’s carbon footprint.”

Project results show a decrease in purchased feed use on the four farms of between 28% and 100%, alongside a decrease in the use of synthetic fertilisers of between 47% and 69%.

The four farms also increased their annual pasture production by as much as 72%, while their cattle showed an increase of up to 43% in daily liveweight gains.

The project results also show that the infrastructure investment required for the project – in electric fencing and water troughs – offered an average return on investment of between 136% and 315%.

One of the farmers involved in the project was Carmarthenshire farm manager Aled Evans from Rest Farm in Whitland, south-west Wales.

The farm finishes 240 cattle a year and Mr Evans has changed from a five-day grazing period with four groups of cattle at the start of the project, to two groups of cattle moving to a new block of grazing every 24 hours.

The grazing period has increased by 71 days, resulting in the winter housing period reducing from 165 days to 100 days, and daily liveweight gains