Charlie Russell is an exceptional individual. It takes a brave man to apply for a farm manager position on a 5,000-acre estate at the age of 24 and an even braver one to then completely change the farming operations of a well-established family estate.

It would have been easy 10 years ago, when he joined the Earl of Inchcape’s Glenapp Estate in Ayrshire to simply make some fine adjustments to the mountain ewe flock, improve the shooting and tweak the traditional suckler herd.

Instead, he ignored the perceived limitations of upland grazing and persuaded the directors of the estate to invest in a multi-million pound project to introduce a dairy herd half way up a mountain, created a home-bred elite health suckler herd and converted a traditional upland block into grazing for an easy-care wool shedding, performance recorded, sheep flock.

Yet this was the man the directors felt, at 24, was just too young and inexperienced to be given the run of the whole estate. They employed him as farm foreman, but within a few weeks it was clear that he was more than man enough for the job of estate’s factor and manager.

Since then he has transformed the estate’s farming operation, starting with the suckler herd which is now a home-bred blend of performance recorded Beef Shorthorn, Aberdeen Angus, Luing and Simmental bloodlines.

All heifers calve at two years old and the calves grow at a minimum of 1kg/day from birth to weaning. The calves are block-weaned from mid to end of October, when the mature cows are turned on to the hills to graze on the heft fenced heather, where they are wintered on deferred grazing and minerals. “This increases the biodiversity and improves the hill grazing for the sheep’s benefit in the following year.”

And the 4,500 sheep flock has also undergone a transformation; Charlie no longer lambs 2,000 mules in sheds, but has created an easy-care, outdoor lambing system by cross-breeding traditional upland and New Zealand sheep genetics. The ewes are smaller, which has increased efficiency and potential stocking density. As well as the benefits of easier management, the lambing period is shorter by six weeks, average lamb weights are up by 1.7kg a head and wintering ewe costs have been slashed by 60%.

The most impressive development at Glenapp must be the dairy, where he has converted 405ha of beef and sheep grazing to an intensive paddock system, and built a 70-point rotary parlour and associated stand- off areas.