Recent farm walk held
- Cathal held a farm walk on 28th March
- Breeding, new sheds, bull system, water quality, safety & silage management discussed
- Booklet available below
Cathal Irwin March/April Update 2025
- New Charolais bull bought
- Heifers will be synchronised & bred back to LM bull
- Simmental bull will be sold
New stock bull for 2025
- Store heifers sold this month
- Two more bulls sold to the factory
- Costs of keeping bulls vs selling as weanlings – did it pay?
Latest sales & costings for bulls
Media
Cathal recently held a spring farm walk. Topics discussed included;
- Optimising breeding in your herd
- Future-Proofing Your Farm: Smart shed & yard investments that are TAMS compliant
- Maximising Profit – Under 16-Month Bull Beef
- Making top-quality silage and reduce feed costs on your farm starting today
The booklet is available to view here: Cathal’s Farm Walk Booklet 2025.
Figure 1: Cathal held a farm walk on 28th March
Breeding
After trying the Simmental bull in the herd for 1 year, Cathal has decided to change bulls for this year’s breeding season. The calves were big at birth and some cows needed help calving him, while one heifer needed veterinary assistance. While the calves on the ground look well, Cathal is concerned that they are long and tall and will be hard to finish in a bull beef system. He has also noticed lower kill out percentages in the Simmental bulls finished so far this year and therefore decided to buy in a Charolais stock bull for this year.
Figure 2: Some of the cows with this year’s calves at foot
The new bull was born in September 2023 and is bred from Fiston (FSZ). Cathal picked him based on the following traits;
- Terminal index of €126
- Cow calving difficulty of 4.4% at 69% reliability
- Carcass weight of 32kg
- Carcass conformation of 1.86
- Age at finish of -1.56 days
As his heifer calving difficulty is high, Cathal will not be breeding him to the heifers. It is unlikely that any daughters he produces will be kept for replacements as his daughter milk figure is -2.7kg.
Figure 3: Cathal’s new Charolais stock bull
The heifers picked for breeding this year are: 402, 1281, 1283, 1285 which are 4 Simmental cross heifers. One of these is home bred and Cathal bought in the other 3. They are averaging €123 on the replacement index with 8.3kg for daughter milk. They are 19.9kg for carcass weight and -4.55 days on age at finish.
Cathal plans to synchronise the maiden heifers, and possibly the first calvers, so that they can be bred back to an easy calving bull. He used the Limousin bull Ivantonov (LM5887) last year and was very happy with him. He is €115 on the replacement index and €124 on the terminal index, but most importantly he is only 3.7% calving difficulty on heifers at 88% reliability. He is a more terminal bull than maternal but Cathal may still have the option of keeping heifers as replacements from the milkiest heifers. SA6253 is another bull that Cathal is considering for the first calvers.
Figure 4: Eurostar traits for Ivantonov (LM5887) from March 2025 evaluation
Performance
Six store heifers were sold in Balla mart on the 11th of March. They averaged 324kg live weight (range of 265kg to 455kg) and made €1595/head or €4.92/kg on average which Cathal was delighted with.
Figure 5: Some of the heifers that were sold recently
A further 2 bulls went to the factory on 21st March and they averaged €3124 at 417kg carcass weight. They were 2 bought in bulls and were sold at 15.5 months of age. The average grade was U=2-.
The remaining bulls were weighed on 25th March. The home bred bulls (7) are averaging 584kg and gained 1.58kg/day since 8th February. The bought in bulls (13 left) averaged 614 and also gained 1.58kg/day since the 8th February. Four bulls are currently fit for sale and will go the factory in the coming week.
With the price of live cattle, Cathal is strongly considering selling the lighter bulls live instead of feeding them on to finish. It would save him work feeding them and he would get more of a financial return. The beef price is very good for the heavy bulls that are continuing to perform so he will continue selling them to the factory.
Figure 6: Some of the lighter bulls were moved onto a straw bedded area for extra space
For the recent farm walk, Cathal calculated the costs of finishing his own home bred bulls versus if he had sold them as weanlings in late October. The extra costs of keeping them on were:
- Ration (1.5t x €353/t) = €529.50
- Silage (4.5 bales x €35/bale delivered) = €158
- Bedding (€55/bale x 12) = €29 (Note: 8 bulls were moved onto straw bedding for 6 weeks to allow more feed space and lying space for all bulls so this cost was divided across 23 bulls)
- Dosing & vaccinations (2.5 doses/head + €14/head vaccines) = €22
- Fixed costs/head = €242 (Note: This is very high on Cathal’s farm due to farm development investments)
- TOTAL: €980.5
The farmers attending Cathal’s walk estimated that if he sold the bulls back in October at 350kg he could have been paid €1400 for them. The bulls he has sold recently are making over €3000 at €7.50/kg base price on a 400kg carcass which means he will make over €600/head by keeping them.