Mark 0gg’s mixed 750 acre farm at Edzell in Angus includes a number of intensive enterprises as well as a specialist suckler cow replacement breeding herd.

Mark Ogg

The 230 cow herd utilizes 500 acres of grassland alongside carrots, potatoes, malting barley plus a 700 sow pig unit and a 120,000 bird per year broiler flock. Although the beef unit has a stocking rate that is low enough to qualify for an extensification premium, the level of management is such that very demanding performance targets are achieved.

TIGHT CALVING PERIODS
The herd of Simmental cross Friesian cows is divided into two sections with 180 calving in the spring and the remaining 50 in the autumn.

Spring calving takes place in the six week period from mid March to the end of April, while the autumn calvers are only exposed to the bull for one cycle of three weeks, so that calving is in September.

All cows and heifers are calved down to a Simmental bull and, for the spring calving, one bull is run with each 35 cows for the first three weeks. At the end of this period the bulls are swapped around to make sure that there is no slippage in any of the calving groups.

All the 3É4 Simmental heifer calves are sold privately at 18 months old, when they are ready to go to the bull.

Stock are outwintered but performance is not lost

100% WEANING
The prolificacy of the Simmental means that in virtually every year there are enough sets of twins to more than offset any calf mortality, and Mark 0gg is disappointed if less than one calf per cow exposed to the bull is weaned each year.

Replacements for the herd itself are purchased as 3 week old calves, with the emphasis on Simmental cross Friesian and not Holstein. These calves are bucket reared to calve down to a Simmental at 26-27 months of age.

0n average, these cows remain in the herd for 7 to 8 calvings.

Bull selection for the herd reflects Mark 0gg’s clear-cut, factual approach to the whole of his business.
There are two criteria which are stuck to rigorously – all sires for the herd must be Signet recorded, invariably with a Beef Value in the Top 10% of the breed; thereafter it comes down to value for money on the day.

The farm is only 250 feet above sea level and in a low rain fall area. Deep gravel beds lie just below the fertile topsoil and the combination of these factors means that all the suckler cows, female progeny and autumn born steers are outwintered.

High animal performance is still achieved by offering creep feed to the spring born calves from mid summer, whilst autumn born calves have access to dry feed until weaning in the spring.

WEIGHT FOR AGE
All animals are weighed immediately prior to sale and passport birth records used to compare daily liveweight gains. In the spring of 2002 the finished bulls were sold to ABP, returning carcase weights of 370 kgs average by 131É2 months having achieved 1.55kg per day liveweight gain from birth. Five percent of the bulls graded ‘E’, seventy five percent ‘U’ and the remaining twenty percent ‘R’.

Autumn born steers were sold as stores in August at 11 months of age by which time they were weighing in between 446 and 460 kgs.

In May and June the heifers were sold, 20 month old autumn born animals at an average of 580 kgs and the 14 month old spring born stock at 440 kgs.

Taking account of the fact that everything is outwintered except the finishing bulls, these levels of performance are exceptional and demonstrate the potential for Simmental stock under such conditions.

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