The Scottish Suckler Beef Support Scheme (SSBSS) has been a cornerstone of support for Scotland’s beef sector for many years. As we reflect on the 2025 scheme year, it is important to acknowledge what can we learn from the first year of the scheme’s new conditionality, and what does that mean going forward.
The 2025 scheme year was significant. For the first time, eligibility was linked to a calving interval of 410 days or less, with first-time calvers exempt. Scottish Government has confirmed rules will remain unchanged for the SSBSS 2026/27, with the calving interval remaining at 410 days.
The 2025 analysis suggests that the new condition has broadly delivered its intended outcome: support has focussed on calves produced by dams with shorter calving intervals, supporting an overall improvement in calving performance. But we must also consider what sits behind those figures.
2025 was a year of change
The introduction of the 410-day condition was intended to encourage improved technical efficiency within the suckler herd. Better reproductive performance can mean more calves from the same breeding herd, improved utilisation of resources and potentially lower emissions intensity. However, a policy objective must always be considered alongside the realities of farming.
We welcome the
SSBSS calving interval insights from 2025 scheme year report. We have continually underlined the importance of analysing the impact of the introduction of calving interval conditionality, including an assessment of herd performance and the impact on the number of calves claimed, particularly for smaller units.
The numbers matter, but so does what sits behind them
The headline is encouraging: calving interval performance improved significantly in 2025, with the mean interval falling to 391 days, the lowest recorded in the 2015–2025 series.
In 2025, 10% of validated claimed calves failed to meet the new eligibility requirement. Importantly, many were only marginally outside the threshold. A quarter of failures had calving intervals of around 430 days or less.
From an NFU Scotland perspective, improving efficiency and reproductive performance across the suckler herd is clearly positive. However, the analysis also highlights some important questions about how the new condition is affecting individual businesses and what lessons should be taken forward. These are as follows:
1. Efficiency gains are encouraging
There is strong evidence of improved performance. Excess days over 410 days for SSBSS-claimed dams fell substantially between 2015 and 2025.
Based on Moxey and Thomson’s (2020) estimates of 2.86 tonnes CO2e emissions per suckler cow per year, this equated to 35k tonnes less CO2e emissions associated with excess days in 2025 compared to 2015.
That is a substantial change and demonstrates the potential for improving reproductive efficiency to contribute to both farm productivity and environmental performance.
However, the analysis itself rightly cautions against treating these figures as a definitive measure of the emissions savings attributable solely to the 410-day rule. Changes in herd structure, market conditions and farmer behaviour will all have contributed. That distinction is important as we consider future policy.
2. Not every farm starts from the same place
One of the clearest messages from the analysis is that the impact of the new condition has not been evenly distributed. The national picture masks substantial variation across herd types, regions and breeds. Larger herds generally had a higher proportion of dams meeting the 410-day rule, while smaller herds showed much greater performance variation. This provides further justification for the decision to introduce a derogation for claims of 10 calves or fewer from 2026.
For NFU Scotland, recognising these differences is vital. A policy designed to improve national efficiency must not inadvertently penalise the very businesses that operate on a smaller scale or in some of Scotland's most challenging farming areas.
3. Second calvers deserve particular attention
The analysis also reinforces concerns we initially cited around second calvers. Second calving dams had longer average calving intervals than the wider dam population, confirming that this group may need particular management attention.
That should be an important consideration in future policy discussions. Improving fertility is desirable, but breeding cows are biological systems and management needs to account for the particular challenges associated with getting young cows successfully through their second calving.
4. We need to distinguish improvement from unintended consequences
During the reform of the scheme, we highlighted there are a very small number of cows who lost their calves at birth and are therefore not registered to trigger the next year’s calving interval period. Therefore, we asked for a mechanism for registration of stillborn calves to be integrated into the reform to ensure that a cow is not penalised in future years for not having a full-term pregnancy recognised.
It is also common industry practice that when a calf sadly dies before the 27-day legal time limit for tagging and registration, it is often not registered, therefore no record of the dam’s calving date will exist.
The report found an increase in day-of-birth death registrations, and suggests this may partly reflect changes in registration practice, because registering a calf resets the dam's calving interval clock. This is in the line with the cattle identification and traceability regulatory requirements.
The bigger question for SSBSS
The analysis gives us valuable evidence, but it is only the first year of a significant policy change. We need to see whether the improvements are sustained, how the rule affects different types and sizes of business, and whether there are unintended consequences. The efficiency gains are encouraging, but the evidence needs to be monitored carefully and policy must remain proportionate, grounded in the realities of farming and what’s happening in the market.
The success of SSBSS should ultimately be measured not just by shorter calving intervals, but by whether it helps maintain a productive, profitable and resilient Scottish suckler herd for the long term.
As we look towards 2028 and beyond, the challenge is to make sure that support is not only retained, but designed in a way that gives farmers confidence to keep breeding cows, investing in their businesses and producing the high-quality beef for which Scotland is renowned.