Media
Ken recently featured in the new Future Beef labour saving series. The series, featuring Future Beef farmers from across the country, showcases simple, effective measures that can help farmers improve efficiency, reduce workload, and enhance safety on beef farms.
Watch the video below where Ken discusses and demonstrates the calf crate that he is now using on his farm for routine management of calves.
Breeding
Breeding started for Ken’s herd on 27th October. After only 2 weeks 12 heifers and 38 cows have been inseminated on the farm, out of 76 in total (15 heifers and 61 cows) – an excellent result.
This year is Ken’s first using the new Sensehub system for heat detection. It was installed during the summer so Ken has had experience using it. However he encountered a few speed bumps for the breeding season which have since been rectified;
- Breeding started on the same day as housing and Ken was alerted to over 30 cattle ‘on heat’ that day which was incorrect. In future he will house before breeding starts to allow for this.
- Three days after breeding the SIM card stopped working and was replaced very quickly by the company, which has a good follow up service.
- On day 4 the solar panel was left North facing in the yard and the system was not powered on as it did not charge. Ken moved the trailed to a south facing location and it working fine now, so he will also allow for this in future.
So far he has noticed that he is inseminating some of the cows and heifers later due to the information provided by the system, which shows the best window for conception on the app. Previously when he was working off f observed heats, he would have inseminated them 12 hours earlier so it will be interesting to see if there is any difference in pregnancy rates as a result of this.
It also helped him to identify any heifers or cows that weren’t cycling, so that he can pay more attention to them over the first 3 weeks and track their activity on the app.
Overall Ken is very happy with the system which is reducing labour on the farm and means that he doesn’t need to go out and check for heat activity in the evenings.
Figure 1: The solar panel for the Sensehub system must face South to charge
Grassland
The closing cover for the farm on 6th November shows an average farm cover of 307 kg DM/ha. The growth rate dropped to 15 kg DM/ha from 23rd October so Ken is happy to have all the grass paddocks closed up since 26th October, apart from where the calves are grazing.
The silage paddocks for 2026 were spread with farmyard manure before the closing date.
Grass growth on the farm was excellent for 2025 and as Ken is measuring weekly, Pasturebase shows that he grew 8.9 t DM/ha for the year. This ranged from 4.78 t DM/ha in an older, heavier field up to 14.1 t DM/ha in a recently reseeded paddock. Overall Ken grew an extra 2.05 t DM/ha since 2024 where he achieved 6.85 t DM/ha in the year.
Figure 2: The annual tonnage report on PBI shows that Ken grew 8.9 t grass DM/ha in