Farm Partnership Father/Son

Madisonmenece

Hi Lads

Sorry if this covered somewhere already but I was wondering how most of you made the transition from parent running the farm to taking full responsibility of the farm and what can be done to form a partnership and share farm income overtime to make it a more gradual process.

we own a small dairy farm which the old fella as been growing slowly over the last few years, we will probably max out at 60 ish cows without renting additional land, full AI herd. as you can imagine theres is unlikely to be two healthy wages from this so just wondering what others did to manage this transition to ensure both are making a living or which is the most efficient way of completing this for entitlements etc.


Thanks
Colin

Timmaay

Madisonmenece wrote: »

Hi Lads

Sorry if this covered somewhere already but I was wondering how most of you made the transition from parent running the farm to taking full responsibility of the farm and what can be done to form a partnership and share farm income overtime to make it a more gradual process.

we own a small dairy farm which the old fella as been growing slowly over the last few years, we will probably max out at 60 ish cows without renting additional land, full AI herd. as you can imagine theres is unlikely to be two healthy wages from this so just wondering what others did to manage this transition to ensure both are making a living or which is the most efficient way of completing this for entitlements etc.


Thanks
Colin

60cows definitely won't allow 2incomes. What age is your dad? Is he planning in retirement soon, and what sort of pension will he have? What is your own position at the minute? Also, what sort of calving pattern? Compact spring /split or Ayr?

I've been making the transition for the last few years. Started out with the farm needing a decent bit of investment, lucky enough my outgoings are fairly low, and my dad has been drawing down his pension, so we have been able to invest a good level of profits back in. I do have a reasonable amount of free time outside of spring/calving seasons, and if the farm was setup better and not currently expanding then I certainly could go off and do part time work or have a business to help add extra income.

Madisonmenece

I don't think the man will ever actually plan retirement, that being said he is only 56/57. we are fully calved down by late march/early april. I think he will be mainly dependent on his state pension, he was paying into a private pension for a while but I'm not sure what that will yield.

I am 31 with to be fair very well paid job, but the job takes me away a lot and high stress attached, both herself and I know that in the future it will not be possible to keep it up and to be honest already looking at other options to keep me home more. she is a full time nurse, we have no kids at the moment.

I wouldn't say we have disposable income as we are building our home at the moment, but we will be in excess of our repayments and while i can, i would like to invest into the farm over the next few years rather than down the line when i may be depending on the farm for a wage.

thanks
col

Timmaay

You said 60 cows is the max without renting extra land, what size is the milking block? How many do you milk now? If you could stretch to 80 or 100 cows it would make it alot more appealing. If land is silly money to rent there usually are options to buy in fodder, likes of maize etc.

Madisonmenece

Approx 67 acres , 4 of which is cut off by A main road so can only be used for silage and replacement stock.

We don't cut heavy cuts but attemt to cut every paddock if possible, this has been providing great quality fodder and extending the life of grass seeds however I would think the yield is lower than that of standard first and second cut

Timmaay

Madisonmenece wrote: »

Approx 67 acres , 4 of which is cut off by A main road so can only be used for silage and replacement stock.

We don't cut heavy cuts but attemt to cut every paddock if possible, this has been providing great quality fodder and extending the life of grass seeds however I would think the yield is lower than that of standard first and second cut

Plenty of good farms around the country stocked at 3.5cows/ha on the grazing block, which would mean 90 cows for you! I'm not saying that this is possible on your farm but keep it in mind.

Madisonmenece

Timmaay wrote: »

Plenty of good farms around the country stocked at 3.5cows/ha on the grazing block, which would mean 90 cows for you! I'm not saying that this is possible on your farm but keep it in mind.

We are currently increasing numbers and currently have scope to keep going for another while at which stage the numbers we increase by each year will be smaller to see what our land can take. the majority of the ground is of good quality, I would assume there would be no fodder being taken form the grazing block at that stock rate.

I was hoping to buy in a few springers every year to speed up the increase in numbers, this would also be me investing into the business. we breed most our stock as buying is a gamble.