05 March 2025
Setting heifers up for a successful breeding season
With the 2025 calving season well underway at Newford, attentions are now turning to this year’s breeding season. Michael Fagan outlines how the replacement heifers are being managed to maximise success.
The breeding and management of our replacement heifers is one of the key aspects of success at Newford, all centring on having a good quality heifer calving down at 24 months of age – an important factor in a profitable and sustainable suckler beef production system.
Calving heifers at 24 months of age has worked very successfully over the years at Newford, with no issues to report. This, to a large extent, is achieved by monitoring weights and ensuring our heifers hit their key performance targets.
Our annual replacement rate is typically 15-20%. Over the last number of years, Newford has bought its replacement heifers as calves and reared them through to the point of calving. As all of the Newford replacement heifers are first cross from the dairy herd, we use the ICBF replacement index to select these heifers.
The ICBF figures for the Newford heifers going to the bull this year are:
- Replacement Index of €170;
- Carcass weight of 2.62;
- Carcass conformation of 0.32;
- Calving interval of -4.02 days;
- Age of finish of -2.80 days.
These heifers will be mated to an easy calving, 5 star Terminal Index bull from April 21st, with the breeding season lasting for six weeks. To ensure heifers are performing and cycling ahead of breeding, they went to grass on February 10th at an average weight of 305kg. At the point of turnout, they received vaccinations for leptospirosis, with a booster planned for four weeks’ time, while the clostridial vaccination was also administered at turnout.
Prior to turnout, the replacement heifers were on a diet of ad-lib 74% DMD silage and 2kg/head/day of a 16% crude protein ration. With an average birth date of February 15th 2024, these heifers have achieved an average daily gain of 0.76kg/head/day from birth to the point of turnout.
More from Teagasc Daily: Making spring grass count at Newford
Find out more about the Newford Herd here.
The Newford Farm is enrolled in the Teagasc Future Beef Programme. Find out more about the Future Beef Programme here.