They graze for approximately three months before coming back in for a short, sharp finishing period. While it means that they are older than 16 months-of-age at slaughter and thus sold for a flat price, off the QPS grid and non-quality assured, Harry likes the cheap weight gain that he achieves during the grazing period.

“Last year we nearly averaged 1.8kg of weight gain per day as a group,” he told me when I visited the farm in early March.

Though a grazing continental-type bull is one of the most lucrative beasts in any beef system from a cost-of-gain point of view, there are plenty of pitfalls to such a system. It is absolutely not for the faint hearted.

Pitfalls

Grazing beef bulls need to be kept happy. They get upset easily and when this happens they’ll damage themselves and your land.

Wet ground and bulls don’t mix. If your ground saturates quickly and dries slowly you will always be one downpour away from ploughing your paddocks. If rain is forecast and there are bulls grazing, move them to fresh grass before it starts.

Keeping heads down is one of the underlying principles in a successful bull-grazing system. These are not like cows in that we are not necessarily chasing a tight residual. It can be done with small paddocks and an exceptionally powerful fence but generally if you try chasing 4cm with grazing bulls, you’ll find that they’ll take the liberty of moving themselves to the next paddock now and again.

Segregate

They need to be segregated away from other animals on your farm. There should be at least two fields between them and female animals and one field for another male group.

Check with any neighbouring farm that’ll be bordering the bulls. Ideally no cattle, male or female, should be grazing alongside your bulls.

Salers cow and newborn calf on Harry’s farm

If you’re going to let bulls out, pull all feed from them for around 12 hours beforehand and ideally wait for a dry day. This way, any playacting will be short-lived and they’ll get down to business straightaway.

In terms of paddock size, give them enough area so that they’re getting fresh material every three days. For a group of 15 450kg bulls and a pre-grazing grass height of 10cm (avoid covers bigger than this with bulls – they’re fussy when it comes to grass quality), that’s around three quarters of an acre at a time.

Harry Lalor’s farmyard from above

As Harry says in the podcast, what makes these overage bull systems work is the gain we get at grass. We are producing these animals in the knowledge that they will be sold at a slightly discounted price, so we absolutely must maximise efficiency. That means getting the very best quality grass into them that we can. If you’re putting stemmy grass into beef bulls, you’re losing potential euros – it’s as simple as that.

Listen to “BETTER farm beef programme: grazing bulls in Co Laois” on Spreaker.

The final and probably most important thing to remember in these systems is that you simply must talk to a factory beforehand.

Many don’t want any sort of bull, underage or overage. But, depending on the contracts and jobs that individual factories have, there are destinations for these types of cattle. What’s vital is to make sure that there will be one for yours when they become fit.

Yearlings on Harry Lalor’s farm prior to turnout

Read more

Multimedia: sourcing heifers and splitting grazing ground in Louth