Part time farming - Time saving techniques

This. There is nothing better than on a sunny summer Sunday afternoon than watching content stock out grazing on good fields of grass. Not a sound from them bar the ripping off the grass as they eat.

At the end of it all, like many part time farmers we're not going to make millions at it - it might balance the books or return a bit of money, but the next best thing is to enjoy it and take pride in what you are producing.

Take your time, you'll get it done.

Farm type has a huge bearing. I see lots of lads throwing the “if you can’t do it on less than an hour a day, then you are wrong”. They have never worked a fragmented farm of heavy land.

My farm of 26 ha of grazing (some rough) is heavy and very fragmented across 8 different blocks. Ranging from 1acre fields up. The amount of time spent moving cattle can be significant. The amount of fencing to be maintained is huge.

Its very hard to make improvements to make things easier. I work full time (maybe 2 days at home lucky enough) and when going to work I am up at 6 due to long commute and rarely home before 7. With a young family there just is not time or else I am not making time.

Well, aren't you the dry sh1te.

For me and my handful of sucklers is I'm lucky that my father used to do dairy before I took over so very good clean land all in paddocks, troughs and easily rotation around the yard. So inherited good setup.

My main things (other than what's listed before) is

- training the cows to come to a bucket of nuts. This is the only reason I'm able to do sucklers! I'm at the stage with them that once they hear the yard gate open their at the paddock wire, calves & all ready to come in. Heifers when I buy in learn from the others and calves learn from their mothers. This makes AI, dosing, vets or whatever a stress free process for the sake of about ~12 bags of nuts over the summer.

- Cull problem animals. In my case, anything that doesn't go with my system gets culled. Life's too short to be running around fields after them!

- Lights & Cameras. I've no black spots around the yard from a safety point of view. Kids love being up there helping in the winter and makes life so much easier with cameras about too.

- Set a yearly goal/project. Over the last few years I've set a yearly project to achieve as part of farm improvement. If like me you've a stressful desk job, working on the farm doing something opposite be it welding making something, knocking walls for calving gates etc I find very therapeutic.

Great thread and I can’t really add anything that is said above.

one thing I’m planning on during shortly for the winter and spring a head is put in a sink with a hot water source. Boiling kettles is a pain.

while I think of it too, we’d have to water the individual pens with the sheep are lambing. But having a barrel close by to pull buckets of water from rather than waiting for a bucket to fill from a tap is a big time saver.

finally, I wouldn’t be worried too much about price on certain things or what people think of your spending. If it makes your life easier and gives you more free time then it’s money well spent, and improvements on infrastructure etc are more or less a life time job

Working full time . Buy in roughly 200 head here a year. Nearly all online now. Serious time saver. Or should I say it means I’ve more time at home anyway. Used to spend half my time off hanging round marts when I should have been at home.

I try to have a full stock of consumables on hand for repair work all in racked shelves. Water fittings, fencing equipment, nuts bolts etc. I rarely go to collect anything in hardwares. This is a hugh waste of time having to head off to pick stuff up imo. Sprays, fertilizer dosing etc. is all bought in time and again it’s either delivered or get parents/wife to pick stuff up when in town.

On day to day stuff is all about having everything where it’s supposed to be including stock. The whole place is electric fenced with concrete drinkers. Good safe facilities are very important. Gates gates and more gates hanging everywhere round the yard. Land is split up so have 4 crushes with the main one in the yard under cover.

Absolutely, no 2 farms are going to be the same. I've a fragmented farm here but always tried to keep the workload to an hour or less during the week when I was working full time, didn't always work out and always left some catching up work at the weekends. Biggest time saver for me was replacing the Jeep trailer with an 18ft tractor trailer and secure pens to load. Paddocks have helped with grass management but more importantly have trained the cattle to go through gateways when called making loading a one man job.

Working part time now and probably spend more time on the farm daily but it doesn't feel like it as I'm not as rushed but also still have more family time and down time. Thought I'd have caught up a lot more on the general maintenance of the place but really haven't, I blame the wet summer and totally not procrastination.

I don't think this thread is intended to beat lads up about spending too much time working their farms but more to share the ideas of how we can all save some time for other jobs, kids or just extra down time. Young families definitly leave time a precious commodity and shouldn't be overlooked as they won't be young for long.

Jeez that’s a clever one for individual penning. And just take of one of the caps to let it drain to freshen up the water when required.

I saw pictures of that myself but would have a fear of a sheep breaking them during lambing. Probably totally irrational fear 🙈

Relax, get an air fryer with a timer

do you cut it as you go or roll back ? I try to roll back every year but about half way through ,it starts to get very difficult and usually falls back down and ends up with holes through it

Used to roll until a couple years ago now I just cut. Its quicker, less stress and easier on the back when it gets to the heavy end as you say

Theres a sight of auto feeders being bought around me and most are lads pulling out of sucklers. Are lads that confident that the dairy crosses will pay their way and not be dropped when Theres a lack of suckler bred stock available and a flush of dairy crosses. I myself think Theres going to be a lot of disappointment with the outcome.

fire away it’ll keep the good continental suckler bred animal being paid for but between extra lads buying calves selling then at the one time it’ll be easy pickings for the likes of bass to pick up stock at handy money.

sorry for going off on a tangent on the thread but it’s something I think is coming down the line.