Farming glossary
Plain-English definitions for the terms you'll run into in the yard, in the forums, or on a feed bag. Nobody's born knowing them.
- Aftermath
- The grass that regrows in a field after it has been cut for hay or silage — often grazed by young stock.
- Bale (round and square)
- Compressed hay, silage or straw tied or wrapped into a manageable block for storage and feeding.
- Bullock
- A castrated male bovine, raised for beef.
- Cover crop
- A crop grown between main crops to protect the soil, hold nutrients and feed soil life rather than to be harvested.
- Creep feeder
- A feeder with gaps only young animals can squeeze through, letting lambs or calves eat extra feed without competition from adults.
- Dry matter (DM)
- What is left of a feed once the water is removed — the fair way to compare fresh grass, silage and dry feed.
- Ewe
- An adult female sheep that has had, or is expected to have, lambs.
- Fallow
- Land deliberately left uncropped for a season to rest and recover.
- FYM (farmyard manure)
- Bedding and dung from housed livestock, stacked and rotted down, then spread as a soil improver.
- Gimmer
- A young female sheep that has not yet had her first lamb — also called a shearling ewe in some areas.
- Grazing rotation
- Moving stock between paddocks in turn so each one gets time to regrow before it is grazed again.
- Haylage
- Grass baled and wrapped at a higher moisture than hay but lower than silage — popular for horses.
- Headland
- The strip at the end of a field where machinery turns round.
- Heifer
- A young female cow that has not yet had a calf.
- Hogget
- A young sheep between weaning and its first shearing, usually 12 to 18 months old.
- Ley
- Grass (often with clover) sown for a few years in a rotation with arable crops, then ploughed up again.
- Livestock Unit (LU)
- A standard measure that lets you compare different animals — one adult dairy cow is 1.0 LU and a ewe is around 0.1 LU.
- Movement licence
- Permission and paperwork that records when livestock are moved on or off a holding — the rules differ by species and nation.
- Muck spreader
- A trailer or machine that throws farmyard manure evenly across a field.
- Paddock
- A small enclosed area of grazing, often one of several used in rotation.
- Silage
- Grass or other forage cut green and preserved by fermentation without oxygen — a store of winter feed.
- Smallholding
- A small farm, usually a few acres, often mixing livestock, growing and direct sales.
- Stocking rate
- How many animals a piece of land carries, usually expressed as livestock units per hectare.
- Suckler cow
- A beef cow kept to rear her own calf on her milk until weaning.
- Tup
- A ram (male sheep) — also the verb for putting the ram in with the ewes.
- Tramlines
- Permanent wheel tracks left through a growing crop so sprayers and spreaders can drive straight and evenly.
- Weaning
- Separating young animals from their mothers so they stop suckling and eat solid feed instead.
- Wether
- A castrated male sheep or goat.