Animal Health
The weanlings had their backs clipped and were dosed at the beginning of November with Dectomax which treated them for lung worms, stomach worms and lice. Olivia had noticed that they were coughing and was concerned about a lungworm burden. Rumen fluke is not an issue on the farm and liver fluke isn’t usually either. However Olivia will take a FEC sample from the weanlings around 7 weeks after housing to check that the worm dosed worked, and for any presence of liver fluke eggs. As the weanlings were housed on 7th November, this can be taken around 26th December.
The lying and feeding space was also calculated for the weanlings and cows on the home farm. Olivia has a 7 bay slatted shed with a concrete lie back. Each pen is 4.57m wide and 8m deep, which amounts to 36.56m2 of lying space.
The cows need 3m2 of lying space per animal and 0.45m of feeding space when getting ad lib silage. When this is calculated out, it means that there is sufficient lying space for 12 cows, but only enough feeding space for 10 cows. There are 11 feed spaces in the barrier which means that 10 cows is the maximum recommended stocking rate for each pen.
Figure 1: The max. stocking rate is 10 suckler cows for Olivia’s pens
The weanlings require 1.7m2 of lying space in their pen, which means that 20 weanlings could be housed. However the feed space is the most limiting factor for them too and at 0.45m feeding space required when eating ration, the maximum stocking rate per pen is 10 weanlings.
Research from Teagasc Grange has shown that insufficient lying space for finishing cattle at 2m2 can result in reduced carcass weights of 20kg per animal, so it is very important for optimum winter performance.
Animal Nutrition
Olivia took silage samples from her bales and silage pit. The best result came back as 76.9% DMD which is excellent and is one of the highest across the Future Beef programme this year. The crude protein was also excellent at 15.81% and the dry matter was 41.1%. Due to the low fibre and high digestibility, the intake potential of the silage is very high.
With this information, Olivia can make feeding decisions for her stock for the winter. She has replacement heifer weanlings that she will target 0.6kg/day on, weanlings for sale that she will target weight gains of 1kg/day, finishing heifers that should be achieving over 1kg/day and dry suckler cows.
The 76.9% DMD silage is best suited for the growing weanlings due to the high crude protein content. She does not need to feed any ration to the weanlings she plans to turn out to grass next year to achieve 0.6 kg/day over the winter. For the sale weanlings, they will need 1kg of a 12% crude protein ration to gain 1kg/day over winter. Meanwhile the protein is too high in this silage for the finishing Angus heifers. A 70.5% DMD silage is also on the farm which has 13.6% crude protein and they can be fed 5kg of a 12% crude protein ration as a finishing diet.
The dry cows are in good body condition so they will be fed a 64% DMD silage for maintenance over the winter period.
Figure 2: 2025 silage sample result at 76.9% DMD
Figure 3: 64% DMD silage is more than adequate for Olivia’s dry cows
Performance
The 2 vasectomised bulls were sold to the factory on 7th November. They averaged 369kg carcass weight and graded O+3- at 20.7 months of age, making €2764 on average.
Figure 4: One of the vasectomised bulls before he was sold
Three weanlings were also sold on 4th November in the mart and averaged 320kg live weight. They made €5.50/kg which Olivia was happy with. Only 14 weanlings are left to be sold, but she is considering keeping them until after Christmas.