The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Ayrshire farmer finds compound for success
Andrew McFadzean got into feed compounding as his farming enterprise was producing excess barley
We were already selling thirdparty feed, so it was a logical extension of that
Significant investment in a new building and handling machinery underscores Andrew McFadzean’s confidence in the feed business he has developed to help increase the profitability of growing grain on the west coast of Scotland.
The business now trading as Pickles Agriculture is based on the farm at Dalchomie, near Maybole, a few miles south of Prestwick, and has grown steadily in the past five years.
Mr McFadzean says it is a good fit with the 500-acre farming enterprise he runs in partnership with his father and uncle, with around half the acreage each given over to grain and other feed crops and to grass for beef production.
The latter involves buying in eight to 12-month beef crosses – mainly continental cross Angus for conformation and quality – which are grazed in summer and in winter are accommodated in new housing.
This involved refurbishing a lowroofed, slatted floor building by replacing the upper structure to leave a wider central passage for a tub-type diet feeder to pass through, and improve ventilation and lighting.
A new handling system enables one man to run the cattle through for regular weighing to monitor weight gain.
The feature is fattening some 300 animals a year, which consumes a fair amount of the farm’s winter wheat, spring barley, spring beans and fodder beet.
“The idea of feed compounding came up because we were growing excess barley and thought we could add value by mixing rations for local producers,” says Andrew McFadzean.
“We were already selling third-party feed, so it was a logical extension of that.”
A roller mill, a mixer wagon and a well-used telescopic handler were the main ingredients for getting the venture off the ground at relatively low cost.
“A paddle mixing diet feeder is a popular machine for producing rations on a relatively small scale,” he said.
“With bigger paddles than a farm machine would have for mixing a silagebased ration, the HiSpec Mix-Max we use does a thorough job pretty quickly, taking about 20 minutes to complete a seven-tonne batch.”
Today, with sales having grown to 12,000 tonnes a year, the operation is housed in a large, new building three times the size of the one it replaced, with a weighbridge built-in and a good number of ingredient bunkers, each capable of holding 30 tonnes, plus smaller units holding rations ready for dispatch.
“Ninety per cent of our compounds are rations that we’ve formulated, the other 10% being bespoke for individual customers,” he said.
“Around 50% of our feeds go for beef cattle, 40% for dairy and 10% sheep.”
About half of all production is delivered by Pickles Agriculture’s own eight-wheeler truck, the other half being collected either in farm trailers if the customer is close enough or in flexible intermediate bulk containers.
Distillers’ grains and sugar beet pulp are among the bought-in ingredients and surrounding farms supply more than 1,000 tonnes of barley a year to supplement the home-grown grains, so the business has a good grip on quality and traceability.
Inside the spacious building, Nevin McNeil is employed full-time on the feed compounding operation and has a new top-of-the-range telescopic handler to play with. During winter, when feed demand is obviously at its greatest, Mr McNeil is often kept busy from 7am to 5pm, so it’s little wonder the handler has clocked up 2,500 hours in two years – way more than any of the farm’s tractors.