Farm Update October 2023

This month is probably the quietest part of the year here in Rossennara – that is until the calves are weaned. The heifers and bulls are being fed ration at grass, but the heifers are a little slow to eat it. I’m feeding them all 1-2 kg per head per day of rolled barley and adding in a 15% crude protein ration to add a little extra flavour. A trough is located in a paddock beside where the cows are grazing, and the calves can access it by going under the horse poles which they have been forward creep grazing through all year.

Weaning

The heifers will be grazing paddocks close to the yard this weekend so my plan is to start their weaning process then. I’m trying out nose paddles, also known as suckling preventers, for the first time this year after hearing from a few farmers that are using them. They will be fitted with the nose paddles this weekend and will be let back out to graze with their cows for one week. I will then remove the nose paddles and separate the heifers from their cows. By all accounts, the calves will be much more settled than if they were immediately split from their cows and housed so I’m curious to see how they work out. The bulls will be weaned the same way, but I will leave them on the cows for another two to three weeks to get as much weight as possible on them before housing.

Grass

There is a lot of grass on the out farm so 18 to 20 dry cows will be hauled over there to graze it tight for the winter. The yearlings that were grazing over there came home and I will be selling 8 heifers and bullocks in the mart this week, so hopefully they will sell well. Five cull cows were slaughtered off grass this week too with no ration, so it’s helping to reduce the feed demand on the farm.

With the wet weather, I’m finding that the cows aren’t very content at grass and are moving through paddocks very quickly – partly due to low dry matter, but also as they are walking some grass into the ground and then refusing to eat it. Storm Agnes didn’t help matters either as it damaged a few fences when it knocked down three ash trees. These have since been repaired and tidied up.

Study Trip

As part of the Future Beef Programme we participated in a study trip in Northern Ireland. We went to a farm walk on Wesley Browne’s suckler farm, just outside Monaghan town. The following day we visited the Foyle Food Group factory and farm in Co. Tyrone. We also travelled to Oliver McKenna’s suckler and calf rearing farm in Eskra and had a great chat with him about his system. It was a very interesting trip and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Shopping List

I am currently shopping for a new Charolais stock bull to replace my younger bull on the farm. Two cows had caesarean sections delivering calves from him this year and after contacting Wetherbys Lab, it turns out that he has the ‘Q’ myostatin gene, which is also known as the double muscling gene. This means that any calves he sires are more likely to be heavier calves at birth and harder to calve. It sounds a little drastic, but the extra labour and costs involved with C-sections just aren’t worth it.

Farm Update August 2023

Animals Scanned

The cows were scanned at the end of July to see if they were in calf or not. 43 cows were scanned and it turned out that 7 of these were not in calf, which was no surprise. Two of these had hard calvings this year and the other 5 appear to have suffered an early embryo loss. The 7 heifers were also scanned and 5 of these are in calf to AI bulls. According to the scanner, one of the heifers had internal reproductive issues and would never go in calf anyway.

All in all, I was happy enough with the results. I plan to calve down over 45 cows next spring and already have 5 in calf cows sourced from a local herd that will arrive later in the year.

In the meantime, I have separated this year’s bull calves and their cows from the heifer calves and their cows to avoid any surprises. Three of the empty cows are fat already and can be sent directly to the factory in late September/early October. The remainder will either be fed ration at grass and sold in the factory with some heifers, or else sold through the mart. Either way they won’t be housed over winter.

Weighing

We also weighed the cows and calves as part of the SCEP scheme. The 21 weanling heifers averaged 246kg and gained 1.26kg/day since birth which I was delighted with. The 20 weanling bulls averaged 264kg and gained 1.38kg/day since birth. The 5 dairy beef heifers were also weighed and they averaged 188kg, after gaining 0.89kg/day since birth.

Weaning

ICBF produces a useful weaning performance report for the suckler calves and I find it useful to benchmark against the targets. The target 200 day weight for heifers is 250kg and my heifers are 290kg. The target for the bulls is 300kg at 200 days and my bulls are doing 320kg which tells me that they’re doing well, despite the weather this year. The average weight of the cows is 700kg and on average they are producing a calf that is 44% of their body weight, which is above the target of 42%. While I like to see the calves doing well, I also like to check on any that aren’t doing so well. Only one calf was doing less than 1kg per day and she’s a heifer calf born on 22^nd February. She was only 30kg at birth and just hasn’t caught up on her comrades. Her cow produced a grand calf last year so I’m not sure why this one is smaller, but there will always be one!

Fertiliser

I will spread the last round of fertiliser this month; a half bag of protected urea per acre on the home farm and 1-1.5 bags of 18-6-12 per acre on the out farm to help build the soil indexes. Farmyard manure has been spread on some second cut silage ground and on a poor performing paddock. This will help build grass for autumn grazing to try and keep the cattle out grazing as late as possible.

The calves are creep grazing ahead of the cows and will be fed barley at grass before and after weaning. This will help to reduce the amount of grass they’re eating and will reduce stress at weaning – the main task in autumn.

Farm Update June 2023

A Dry May

After an exceptionally wet April here in Rossenarra, we very quickly turned a corner into a very dry May and June. Now don’t get me wrong; the sunshine is fantastic to see! We had such comfort making silage, the cows and calves are extremely content and the graze outs are excellent. They are getting an extra day grazing in each paddock while the dry matter is so high, and I’m expecting good quality re-growths which means I won’t have to top fields.

Days Ahead

However it also acts as a reminder of how much our grass-based system still needs rain. I am in a fortunate position that the grass is still green and that we got some rain last weekend. I have about 12 days of grass ahead, but would like to see this closer to 16 days for peace of mind. The paddocks that have been grazed so far are very slow to recover and any paddocks that are ready to graze at 1200-1400 kg dry matter per hectare (just under three fistfuls of grass) are crispy and dry to walk through. The out farm is heavier in nature so it is growing back fast enough to feed the store cattle. I’m not feeding out silage to cattle yet, but will possibly have to if the rain doesn’t come. It is forecasted for this weekend though so I’ll await it in hope!

Breeding Season

The breeding season finished on 12^th June after 9 weeks, and the stock bulls were separated from the cows and calves. There is an old stone walled garden on the farm so the bulls are safely secured there. I noticed a few cows repeating around the end of May and into early June that were mainly late calvers, but have seen very little activity since then thankfully. Two rounds of AI were completed with the heifers and I will scan them all around the end of July.

Silage

Silage was cut between 15^th and 28^th May. It averaged from 8.5 to 10 bales per acre which I was very happy with. After silage was cut, I spread 2,000 gallons/acre of slurry on the fields straight away and topped up with 1 bag of protected urea/acre the following week before the land got too dry. In hindsight I’m delighted that it went out so quickly, as there is no point spreading fertiliser now until after the rain comes which would have delayed the second cut. I have 60 bales of silage and 60 bales of hay left over from last winter, now have a further 235 from first cut and will need to make 135 bales in the second cut which I will manage comfortably.

Finishing Bulls

The last of the finishing bulls left the farm on 1^st June. There were 16 slaughtered in total from 3^rd April. The average age at slaughter was 14.8 months and they had an average carcass weight of 408kg. They graded U-3- on average. Despite being heavier at housing, the age at slaughter was similar to last year but the carcass weight was 15kg heavier. They made an extra €165/head and ate less ration so the class of 2023 already have a lot to live up to!