This week, the first 13 lambs were drafted for slaughter on Tullamore Farm.

Lambs are receiving no meal as of yet and are being finished off grass only.

They were slaughtered late in the week and weights and prices will be reported in next week’s update.

Farm manager Shaun Diver has placed some precaution measures to prevent fly strike with the recent periods of hot weather.

All the hoggets on the farm were sheared this week, with the lambs all receiving short-withdrawal pour-on last month.

Going in early with pour-on for the lambs means there is no issue with withdrawal periods once lambs begin to come fit for slaughter and a further benefit of doing them early is that they are lighter, so less product is required to treat them.

Grass cover

The average farm grass cover has reduced significantly over the last two weeks, sitting at 490kg DM/ha this week, a reduction of 535kg DM/ha from the grass cover on 10 June.

The average growth rate per day is 28kg DM/ha, with the demand per day currently 48kg DM/ha.

Shaun commented: “Ground is very dry on the farm, resulting in the growth being lower than demand this week, with an overall growth recording at 28kg DM/ha/day.”

This week, Shaun spread one bag/acre of Pasture Sward on some of the paddocks which were grazed and topped post-grazing in the last week.

It is hoped that the rainfall forecast for over the weekend will help boost growth once again and get things back on track over the next 10 days.

A total of 48 acres were closed off this week for second-cut silage later in the summer.

Breeding

Breeding is coming to an end on the farm, with the Salers stock bull now being removed from the heifers to be placed with the remaining cows in order to mop up.

This week, the earliest batch of cows and the maiden heifers were scanned, with only four out of 40 cows not showing in-calf, with an additional 20 heifers scanned in-calf.

Shaun said: “I was fairly confident that we would have a good result from the scan, as I had seen little or no bulling activity from those batches, but you are always nervous until it is confirmed by the scanning results.

"Some of the late-calving cows aren’t bulled long enough to scan just yet, but it is planned to scan these cows in mid-August.”