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Hello MyFarmers, back with Simon Damant again. We’re stood in front of the experimental
hedge which is looked after by DEFRA and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. It’s quite
a good place for us to stand for this next vote because they’ve looked after different
bits of it in different ways. We’ve got some coppicing and some laying and some mowing
all in different parts of the hedge. Simon, next vote is one of your hedges and how we’re
going to manage it. So what are the options that we’re looking at and what are the pros
and cons of each really?
Well in the background we’ve got, nearest to us, is the laid hedge and that’ll be
stock-proof as you can see there won’t be many sheep going through that fence. It costs
about £15 a metre to do because we get a contractor in. Alternatively we can go a little
bit further up and see where it’s all been coppiced and it’s all just shooting up.
Now again that’s roughly going to cost perhaps £10-15 a metre, slightly a bit less, but
as we can see the sheep can walk straight through fence and it will not act as a sheep
barrier for quite a while. The next hedge is a little bit further up – it’s got
two bits to it. One half’s been trimmed, one half’s not been trimmed but that’s
a flailed hedge. That will somewhat keep the sheep in and it’s a lot cheaper so it’s
£2 a metre to cut that.
So a flail, for the laymen amongst us is basically a big tractor with a chainsaw on it.
No, it’s like a mower, it’s a drum mower, so it’s got these anvils on it, about maybe
50 anvil heads and they just go swinging around like that and it sort of like rips the hedge
a little bit.
So a lot of MyFarmers will have seen them, those are the ones that drive along the side
of motorways and all those kind of things, those big machines that go along them.
Yeh – there are many variable ones. You can get ones that cut a lot better depending
on the anvil head you use. Sometimes if people do it cheaply, it can look a bit untidy.
Something else that I know MyFarmers will be keen on with this vote is which type of
hedge management is best for wildlife or is there a best…?
Well to be honest with you when you manage them like this they’re all pretty much the
same. With the first year when you manage it like laid, not many birds get into it,
some of the birds quite like it for nesting in but it doesn’t seem to hold that much.
It’s not until much later on when it bushes up, then they like it, but they do like the
tight hedge. On the coppice some birds like it when it’s like that but again it’s
not until the majority of the birds like it when it’s a bit further advanced, and the
trimming they’ll nest in that, that’s usually what they’ve had to put up with
all these years anyway. It’s better if it’s left for 2-3 years to get the roughness to
it.
So one of those ‘variety is the spice of life’ moments?
Yes it is really.
Great thanks.