A WHITFIELD farmer will talk about the innovative idea he successfully imported from America during the next NBA open farm day.

For the past three or four years, Bevis Jordan, farm manager at Mains Rigg, has been sizing up his heifers pre-breeding with the help of local vet Karl Collins, who measures the beasts’ pelvic areas.

“When I was in America, a friend of mine, who had been doing this for a long long time, put me on to it,” said Bevis.

“I talked to Karl about it when I got back and then we developed it between us.

“It hasn’t been done much in the UK at all, but as an idea, it is beginning to take off.”

Bevis, who has been with the Whitfield estate for more than 20 years now, has been turning the 125-strong suckler business into a low input system producing top quality suckled calves and herd replacements.

The National Beef Association has chosen the farm as the host for its northern Autumn Farm Walk because of his willingness to trial new methods and to invest in infrastructure in his drive to constantly improve the herd.

After foot and mouth, he altered the business model from buying in replacements to breeding his own, choosing the Saler breed to do so. He hasn’t looked back since.

The top 10 per cent of cows are bred to a Saler bull and the remainder with Limousin stock bulls. The herd performs well, achieving over 90 per cent of calves weaned year on year, the majority of cattle calving within an nine-week block and all replacement heifers calving at two years old.

Suckled calves are sold in the autumn, with cattle fed though the winter on silage and loose minerals formulated to compliment the farms forage analysis. Only heifers are fed beef nuts, to ensure steady growth.

And thanks to the annual pelvic assessments – designed to weed out the potential replacement heifers with measurements too small to calve naturally – there are very few difficulties there when the time comes.

Bevis said: “We’ve never many big problems, maybe one or two caesareans a year and maybe a couple of difficult calvings, but since we started doing the annual assessments, we’ve had no caesareans and very few difficult calvings – in fact, none of the latter this year. It’s a great management tool.”

During the open farm day on Wednesday, Karl will demonstrate pelvic measuring using a group of 2017 heifers.

Bevis will also show visitors the purpose-built shed and handling system, incorporating squeeze-crush and adjustable width race components, he designed based on what else he’d seen in America.