Andrew McMenamin is a part-time farmer who farms just outside Castlefinn in the Finn Valley in Co Donegal. Andrew works off-farm with United Feeds, a Northern Ireland animal feed company. He spends a lot of time on the road calling to clients, so time is limited on the home farm.

He farms 30 acres, finishing 30 animals annually, so he is stocked quite high for the number of acres that he is farming. Last week, Andrew hosted an Animal Health Ireland/Teagasc Calf Care event where calf health, calf rearing, calf nutrition and rearing where all covered. The event is part of a series of events taking place around the country over the next few weeks.

“Dairy beef suits me. They are very easy stock to handle and I like the calf-rearing process,” he tells the Irish Farmers Journal.

“We are lucky in that we have a lot of dairy farms in the area so I can purchase calves locally. I like to purchase the calves on-farm as I think there is less stress involved as opposed going to marts and buying different calves from different farms.”

Andrew kept the number of dairy farms he dealt with in 2024 to three farms all within a five-mile radius of the farm.

He built a purpose-built three-bay calf-rearing shed in 2022 and availed of a TAMS grant to build it.

He’s a man for detail and put a lot of thought into designing the shed, including fitting a roller door between it and an adjoining shed to prevent air flow from weanlings into the young calves in the rearing shed.

Quality calves

Tommy Cox, Teagasc beef specialist, spoke about the importance of buying a good-quality calf, not just in terms of conformation but also in terms of health.

Beef farmers want to buy healthy calves. It’s an integral part of a successful dairy beef system and one that is in the control of the dairy farmer. Colostrum is number one when it comes to calf health and it’s important that dairy farmers ensure that calves have received enough colostrum in the first few days after birth.

Having adequate housing and using plenty of straw for bedding calves is also key in having a healthy calf to sell.

The final piece of the quality-calf jigsaw is the quality of the calf being produced. This is down to the genetics of both the cow and bull used to breed the calf. A new index was launched a few years ago (and slow to get going in calf-buying circles) called the commercial beef value (CBV) index.

This index is a valuable tool in terms of identifying calves that will go on and perform well on a dairy-beef farm and takes a little bit of the guesswork out of it when buying a three-week-old calf.

Of course, the most important thing is that you look at the calf and make sure it looks good and healthy, but the CBV should also be factored into the calf purchase decision-making process and what to pay for high-CBV calves versus low-CBV calves.

The Dairy Beef Index is the index to use to breed high-CBV calves with particular emphasis needed on the Beef Sub Index to get calves with a good CBV index. A simple figure for farmers to remember when selecting bulls to breed beef calves from the dairy herd is to target using a bull with a minimum Beef Sub Index of €100. Dairy farmers should aim to select early-maturing bulls with a minimum of +10kg for carcase weight and if using continental bulls a figure of +20kg carcase weight or higher should be used. Cows should be grouped into three groups on the farm: maiden heifers; second calvers; and small-framed cows and mature cows with calving difficulty matched to each group accordingly.

Calf rearing

Gavin Doherty from the local Teagasc office in Ballybofey outlined some of the most important points when it comes to calf rearing on Andrew’s farm.

“The development of the rumen is one of the key objectives of calf rearing,” Gavin said.

“The newborn calf depends on milk or milk replacer as its source of early nutrition and the rumen is not capable of digestion and must be developed over the rearing phase to kickstart it into action.

“By 12 weeks, the rumen should be fully developed with the animal capable of eating and digesting the diet of an adult animal. The key ingredients for rumen development are water and concentrate feeding.

“A lot of people think that straw or hay are more important for rumen development. They are important, but concentrate feeding is far more important in developing the rumen from four to 12 weeks of age,” Gavin added.

Propionic acid is important for calf growth, but it’s the butyric acid that promotes the development of the rumen

Early introduction of calf starter concentrates will prompt the development of bacteria in the rumen.

“Calf starter concentrates contain carbohydrate in the form of starch and this starch is then broken down into volatile fatty acids such as butyric acid and propionic acid,” he explained.

“Propionic acid is important for calf growth, but it’s the butyric acid that promotes the development of the rumen.”

Fresh concentrates should be made available to calves from three days of age. Fresh water is also extremely important to have available to calves at all times to make sure there is enough liquid in the rumen to promote bacterial production. The objective of the calf-rearing process is to make sure the rumen develops properly and also make sure the calf hits the desired calf growth rates. A typical target would be to achieve 15% of mature bodyweight at the weaning stage.