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ABOUT US

This beef and swine farm which is located on highway #89 about 7 miles east of Mount Forest or 13 miles north of Arthur.  The soil is a Harriston Silt loam with clay sub-soil.  There are 470 acres on this farm of which 420 are tiled workable acres.  This farm is owned and operated by Frank and Joyce Huber and Robert and Heather Huber and family. One part-time helper and a brother-in-law who dairy farms round out the work force.

BEEF

The beef part of this farm consists of 80 to 90 beef cows, which are predominately British breeds.  Black Galloway and Angus crosses make up the majority of the herd with Hereford and Shorthorn the founding breeds.  Two of the three bulls we have now are purebred Galloway (one Black and the other is Dunn) and the third one is an Angus-Galloway cross.

The calves are born in April, May and June weaned in the fall and fattened and sold the following July to November.   We leave the male calves as bulls and they are sold fattened on the rail to Better Beef in Guelph.   The best of the heifers are kept as replacements and rest are fattened and these to are also sold to Better Beef.  We cull around 20% of the cowherd every year.  

The cows are on limited pasture (we aim for one cow calf pair per acre) with access to stored foodstuffs whenever they need feed.  Haylage, corn silage, dry hay and straw make up the forages, with mixed grain (a mixture of barley, spring wheat and peas), dried corn and winter wheat making up the grain portion of the diet.                                    

SWINE

The swine part of this farm consists of 40 to 50 sows farrow to finish.  Shamrock supplies the gilts and boars.  The feed consists of mixed grain (a mixture of barley, spring wheat and peas), corn and winter wheat.

CROPPING

The acreages vary from year to year so I will give you ranges that we grow of the different crops.

           CROP                               # OF ACRES                   

The hay fields are rotated every two years.  The hay/pasture fields will go with a four-year rotation. (I.e.: two years hay and two years pasture) 

Winter wheat goes into sod or soybean stubble and corn goes into sod, plow-down clover or pasture.  Mixed grain is the only crop that has some acres that go back to back.  Most often if the crop is second year mixed grain it is under seeded to alfalfa.

The changes that we presently undertaking are to increase the amount acres in pasture and to have those fields in rotation with grain corn so we are able to pasture the corn stalks after harvest.

One item that is worth mentioning is that we pre-harvest apply Round Up to a hay field that is going to be removed from production.  We do this with the second cut which is then harvested and blended with the corn silage at approximately ¼ to ⅓ haylage to corn silage.

FEED MANUFACTURING

All feeds are made on farm.  The farm is self-sufficient in that the only products bought in are 48% soyameal and premixes.  The soybeans that we grow are extruded here on the farm and used in the hog rations to replace a portion of the soyameal.