A Welsh sheep farm is hoping to increase resilience in its lamb finishing system by growing drought-tolerant lucerne.
The deep-rooted nitrogen-fixing crop with its high protein content has the potential to be the ideal feed for finishing lambs at Newton Farm, Brecon.
The Roderick family applied for funding from the new Farming Connect ‘Try Out Fund’ to investigate if growing lucerne could make their business more resilient to drier grazing seasons, and against volatile feed prices by displacing bought-in concentrates.
Their farm, which sits on a south-facing bank and has free-draining soils, is prone to grass burn off in a dry hot summer.
Richard Roderick says that with a changing climate likely to result in those summers becoming commonplace lucerne could be part of a mixture of solutions that make Welsh farming businesses like his more resilient.
It is already commonly grown and successfully utilised by sheep farmers in the east of England and New Zealand but less so in Wales.
Mr Roderick is currently changing his sheep system, with plans to lamb greater numbers of sheep outdoors in April to reduce concentrate use and feed costs.
But this change comes with concern that he must have a reliable source of high-quality grazing for growing and finishing lambs throughout the summer.
He plans to grow 9.7 hectares of lucerne, incorporating cocksfoot and timothy into the ley.
The crop, which will be planted in spring 2024, will be rotationally grazed by lambs through to finishing.
Its yield will be monitored and lambs weighed at key points during the trial with their weights compared to lambs grazing grass and clover leys, to establish if it can deliver positive financial benefits for the business compared to those feeds.
Lamb health and worm burdens will be monitored too with support from Honddu Vets, Brecon.
Mr Roderick says he hopes lucerne could further reduce the farm’s carbon footprint by speeding up lamb finishing periods.
The Try-Out fund provides funding for successful project applications to individual business or groups of up to four farming businesses and growers.
The new application window opened on 9 October and will run until 20 October.
Successful applicants will be awarded up to £5,000 to help fund on-farm trials that experiment with new ideas.