Events

Join us for the first of three events based around the new Soil & Nutrient Network for Orkney in 2020.

Lyking Farm, our host farm, is a 174ha suckler cow unit based in the parish of Sandwick, some 12 miles from Orkney’s main town of Kirkwall.

Its 120 spring calving cows are mainly Simmental crosses which typically run with Limousin and Simmental bulls to produce stores sold at around 18 months of age. Their diets at housing consist of home-grown silage, barley and straw, supplemented with a small quantity of purchased protein.

This first online meeting will look into the fundamentals of soil analysis, explaining the importance of maintaining good pH, phosphate and potash levels. Recent soil reports for the host farm will be discussed and various remedial actions recommended where appropriate using different products available in Orkney.

For this event, our guest speaker is SAC Consulting’s Soil and Nutrient Management expert, Dr Bill Crooks.   We will discuss the various options available for maintaining soil fertility levels in Orkney, including, cattle slurry, biosolids, pot ale and conventional inorganic fertilisers.  You will have the opportunity to raise questions during the meeting.

Use this Link to register for the event; this will be confirmed by an email which will detail how you can join the meeting on Tuesday 18th August.

We have more information about the Soil & Nutrient Network where you can also find out more about our other host farms – click  here.