Alex McCarthy – Farmer Update March 2024
Rain, rain and more rain! Grazing certainly has been challenging throughout March. With a lot of the drier ground grazed it has been very difficult some days to find a “dry” paddock to leave the cows off to for a few hours.
We hosted our local discussion group – The Ballingarry DG on March 5th. It was great to get to host our group and show them how we are progressing with grazing and nutrient applications this spring. We also showed the group our pond, multispecies paddocks and the white clover paddocks that are receiving no chemical nitrogen. As we have a large discussion group it is usually only once every 18 months that we host a meeting. These group meetings are vital for knowledge exchange and knowledge transfer.
We completed our first milk recording for 2024 on February 20th and we had our second recording on the 21st of March. We always aim to book a milk recording within 60 days of the first cow calving. This allows us to assess how the dry period went and our cure rate over the winter. We will identify cows with high SCC and keep these for calves for a number of weeks and then assess these highlighted cows at the next milk recording.
We took advantage for the few fine days in early March to get going with chemical fertilizer for the year. The drier side of our farm received 30 units per acre of 46% protected urea and the heavier ground received 1 bag per acre of 18-6-12. We have a nutrient management plan that we follow and colour coded maps to ensure we are applying the correct product in the correct location. From a slurry point of view, we are following cows when the weather allows at 2000 gallons per acre.
Our current farm cover is at 672 kg DM/Ha. I completed the last walk on March 21st and recorded a growth of 19 kg DM/Ha since the last walk. Hopefully the growth will increase as the best paddocks grazed are currently at 800 Kg DM/Ha as we approach the beginning of April and the start of the 2nd round. Pre-grazing yields are mixed. The heavier ground has covers of 2000 kg DM/Ha while there are lighter covers being offered by night at approximately 1300 kg DM/Ha. As of the 21st of March we have almost 75% of the milking platform grazed. Currently cows are receiving 4 kg of concentrates at 16% CP.
We have been looking at bulls over the past couple weeks. We have selected a team of 10 Dairy bulls to use on both heifers and cows. We have selected bulls from both Dovea Genetics and Munster Bovine. The average EBI of the bulls we have selected is €344. The sub-indexes that we focus on are fertility with a team average of €149, Health with a team average of €15 and Fat and Protein PTA’s. The PTA for fat % is 0.33 and for protein % is 0.22 for our team of bulls. Based off of this it gives us a predicted potential of 4.75 % fat and 3.93 % protein for our calves that will be born in 2025.
We completed an interesting exercise at our March Discussion group meeting. We compared the number of straws you would need to use to get 20 live heifers calves using either sexed semen or conventional semen. Taking bull calves, mortality and conception rate into account, you need to use 46 sexed semen straws approximately to get 20 heifer calves but over 60 conventional straws to get the same number of heifers.
Our herd has a beef sub-index of -€8 currently. As we can produce all our heifer calves required through sexed semen we will also use beef AI. Using the DBI (dairy Beef index) we hope to produce top quality beef calves. As our herd has a minus figure for beef we will need to use bulls with a DBI of €99 – €182 to ensure we produce calves that have a 4* or 5* CBV (Commercial Beef Value). We will also look that the bulls selected will have a +10 kg for carcass weight. Calving difficulty of 6% or less on Dairy heifer calving difficulty is important to us also.