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Sean Hayes calves 60 sucklers on a 140ac, fragmented farm at Tulla, Co Clare. The herd’s calving pattern is split, with 40 spring-calvers and 20 autumn-calvers.
“Do I prefer autumn or spring calving? I guess it would have to be autumn,” Sean told me.
“You’re calving them outside in what is generally a good time weather-wise. Cows are fit to calve too. You need lots of shed space in the spring when calves are coming thick and fast – something that I haven’t really got here.”
Shed space has been Sean’s bugbear in recent years as the farm has developed. For the land base that he has, a lack of shed space is shackling him from running the systems and stocking rates that he’d like. Up to now, he was selling weanlings and forward stores, dabbling in finishing where he could. As well as this, Sean was buying in 20 to 30 stores to complement his own cattle and try to boost output on the farm. Still, his limited capacity to winter cattle has held him back and the farm’s gross margin in 2016 was just €388/ha, with a stocking rate at 1.4 LU/ha.
Sean is passionate about breeding cattle and has established what is one of the top herds in the BETTER farm beef programme from a quality point of view. He uses around 50% AI on the farm, with lots of Belgian Blue, Charolais and Limousin featuring (see pictures).
Listen to “Superb stock need more space in Tulla” on Spreaker.
In the past, many of these animals would’ve gone for sale in the back end, at a time when grass cattle were coming on to the market and prices had generally receded across the boards.
The team felt that the prices Sean was commanding did not match the quality of his stock and the effort he had put in to produce them.
“Sean has 10 lovely autumn-born bulls that we’re going to finish on the grid this Christmas,” said BETTER farm beef adviser John Greaney. “They’ll be coming back in on their birthday in September at a weight of hopefully around 500kg. Then we’ll push them out under-16 months off a high-concentrate diet.
The plan
Sean’s plan is to move to between 70 and 80 cows, finishing all of his stock. He will retain the spring/autumn-calving split. Given the quality of Sean’s stock, the team is happy for him to move straight into bull beef.
A high weaning weight is crucial for this system to work, and Sean is currently achieving this.
He needs, however, to tighten up his calving spreads to two eight-week periods as uniformity is crucial in any serious finishing system. While his autumn pattern is already good at eight weeks, his spring season runs from January to April.
He will look to push to a stocking rate of just under 2.4 LU/ha by the end of the BETTER beef programme. To reach this, he will need to consider investing in winter housing or renting a shed locally.
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