Glanbia Heifer Rearing Programme kicks off

The first of the Glanbia Agribusiness Heifer Rearing Programme workshops took place on the farm of Phil Purcell, Kilmanagh, Co Kilkenny, on Tuesday.

The aim of the programme is to improve the quality of heifer rearing on farms by putting a greater focus on achieving weight gain targets from birth to calving at 24 months.

There are 23 monitor farmers in the programme, spread across the Glanbia catchment region, and they are visited monthly by programme co-ordinator James Gannon.

“There are five key areas that we focus on; firstly, dry cow management, then birth, then birth to weaning, weaning to breeding and then finally breeding,” said James.

“Our overall objective is to help farmers to produce more heifers, and for them to calve down at 24 months of age on target weight.”

At the workshop on the Purcell farm, Emer Kennedy from Teagasc spoke of the importance of getting three litres of colostrum into newborn calves within two hours of birth, but also of the importance of testing colostrum as her work in Moorepark has shown up a very big variation in colostrum quality between cows.

She also said that only 55% of heifers are calving down at between 22 and 26 months of age, which is adding significant cost on farms.

The Purcells are milking 186 cows and have 68 heifer calves and 41 maiden heifers. The average weight of the heifer calves last week was 156kg while the heifers weighed 454kg. Both groups of stock have gained 0.82kg per day over their lifetime.

The programme is to run for three years and clients of Glanbia Agribusiness will be invited to workshops on the monitor farms to go through their heifer rearing protocols and learn from the monitor farmer’s experience of being on the programme. Volac and Alltech are also involved.