
Spring 2024 review
- ICBF calving performance report
- Bull will be pulled in mid-July
- Autumn calving will start on 12th August
Spring calving finished on 6th May this year and lasted just over 11 weeks in total since the first calf was born on 14th February. 47 cows calved in total this spring, and a further 32 calve din the autumn resulting in 79 in total.
Looking at the KPIs, the calving interval was 378 days which is below the national average of 390 days. Mortality at birth was low at 1.3% but mortality at 28 days was 5.1% as a result of a scour and pneumonia outbreak in the spring calves. The calves per cow figure is 0.91 and only one cow did not calf in the period. The spring 6 week calving rate was 49% and the autumn 6 week calving rate was 47%. 23 cows were culled in total which gave a 29% replacement rate – mainly due to lower numbers in calf from the autumn herd. Two cows slipped from one calving season to the next and 59% of calves born were from AI bulls.
Figure 1: ICBF beef calving report 2024
Breeding for the spring herd will finish in mid-July when the bull will be removed, and this will help avoiding any cows calving in May 2025.
Figure 2: The bull will be pulled in mid-July
The autumn herd are due to start calving from 12th August.
John has calculated his fodder budget for winter 2024. He will require 1250 silage bales at 25% dry matter in to house the following stock for 5 months:
He has 100 bales left over from 2023 and made approximately 400 bales in his first cut silage. However this means he needs to make a further 750 bales to have enough fodder. He does not think that this will be feasible and is making plans to reduce the stock that he will have next winter:
Figure 3: Weaned autumn calves are getting ration at grass
10 cows were finished on 29th April. They were 412kg carcass weight on average, graded R+3= and made €2039/head.
John bought 2 news heifers on 3rd May to join the spring herd.
The 2022 autumn bullocks (18) were weighed on 7th June and averaged 494kg. They gained 0.46 kg/day since their previous weighing on 2nd December.
The 2023 spring bulls (18) were weighed on the same day and averaged 428kg.
The 2023 spring heifers (19) averaged 374kg.
16 bullocks were sold on 14th June. They averaged 527kg live weight and made €3.35/kg on average.
Figure 4: One of the bullocks that were sold