Herbal leys trial opens doors to investment opportunities

Tenant farmers Justine and Graham Worsey aim to reduce costs and maintain production by offering investment into their herd for one of their team and putting their entire grazing platform into the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) SAM3 herbal leys option.

Based in Derbyshire, Rough Grounds Farm is made up of a split block-calving herd of 300 crossbred cows on 161 ha, with a big focus on grazing and milk from forage.

First-generation farmers Justine and Graham started with a small number of cows, renting several parcels of land, until they were offered a 60-acre starter tenant farm in Cubley, Derbyshire.

After six years, they were offered Rough Grounds Farm on a 30-year agreement.

With 11 years left on their tenancy, they were able to renegotiate to 30 years, enabling them to bring their daughter Jess more formally into the business and to invest in the farm’s infrastructure.

Jess’s brother Tom had taken a tenancy opportunity outside the family farm, taking some depreciating capital, leaving some space at Rough Grounds for a joint venture with the right individual.

The added security and grant opportunities have allowed the business to invest in the farm.

They created a covered feeding area, enabling them to extend the milking parlour and increase housing space for the cows in winter months, as well as providing a better working environment for the staff.

Further opportunities were identified by analysing their Comparable Farm Profit (CFP) with their consultant Tony Evans from The Andersons Centre, who also sits on the Strategic Dairy Farm steering group.

This highlighted the potential to increase farm profits by 14%, potentially saving 6–7 ppl from various areas of the business.

A key focus area for Graham is forage management, and in particular, grazed forage.

The herd produces 6,300 L/cow/lactation, of which 4,600 L are produced from forage or 550 kg MS.

Effectively, 73% of the milk produced is ‘forage sourced’ and helped to keep feed costs down to 4.82 ppl last year.

Graham already utilised clovers within his grazing platform alongside ryegrass and was keen to trial herbal leys on his heavy, high-magnesium soils.

Last year, he sowed several paddocks of a simple plantain, chicory, white clover and rye grass mix.

After some initial establishment challenges and increasing the chicory content, he found there was an acceptable dry matter feed value for the cows and the pasture species proportion altered through the year.

Graham said:

“We decided to try herbal leys last spring out of curiosity. We wanted to see how this may affect milk from forage, learn how to manage it for effective grazing and look at making it work for our farm.

“We direct drilled two fields and ploughed then reseeded one to see the best method of planting. I think the best method for us is the full reseed as it allows the seed to germinate without competition, but we have recently started to see some success from the direct-drilled area, so I will reserve judgement.

“We believe herbal leys will help us to reduce our nitrogen application rates. This year we only applied 110 kg per hectare plus slurry, but we may be able to further reduce this in subsequent years.”

As part of our Strategic Dairy Farm programme, independent consultant and grass scientist Liz Genever helped Rough Grounds analyse their soil, the plant root and soil structure.

She advised what practices would address the compaction issues, reduce the pest species and provide the best chance of establishment success.

Working with Liz has also helped the farm evaluate the risks and opportunities of putting their entire milking platform into herbal leys such as larger rooting depth to reduce soil compaction and fertiliser use.

Some of the other considerations for the Worseys included managing docks growing among the leys and managing dry matter growth during the early and late seasons when the herb and legume species are slower to grow.

Another practical issue that needs to be thought through when rotationally grazing herbal leys is to accept that an increased ‘round length’ may be necessary particularly early in the season.

Plate metering can be less accurate on herbal leys, so you may need to respond quickly with your allocations while you acclimatise.

When considering herbal leys, you may need to factor in additional seed and establishment costs because there are challenges with persistence in some species.

However, overall, the funding through the Government’s SFI Scheme, with herbal ley payments at £382/ha, has made it feasible to trial different options.

The fertiliser savings are a further bonus, and they can also be favourably rewarded through milk contracts.

Rough Grounds Farm have been working with their Strategic Dairy Farm steering group to establish the areas they will focus on over the next three years.

The 1,000-day journey will focus on climate resilience, youngstock health, genetics and soil and pasture management, all while referring to a farm CFP to ensure that action translates to profit without negatively affecting it.