Weanling heifers have been housed a week at this stage and settled well indoors.

Half of these heifers are being returned back outside to graze forage rape.

They were housed last week to get them used to eating silage before being put back to rape.

Proper management of forage rape demands that 30% of the animals' diet must come from a forage source fed alongside the rape. Good-quality baled silage will be fed in a ring feeder as heifers graze through the rape.

The top headland of the paddock runs parallel to a farm roadway, so bales will be able to be dropped in over the fence as required. This eliminates having to enter the field with the tractor, cutting out any damage or tracking of the paddock.

In an ideal situation, these bales would have been left out in the paddock at the time of sowing, but we were unsure at the time if the crop was going to be grazed by cattle or sheep.

Yield

These cattle will be introduced gradually to the rape by grazing for a few hours and returning to grass to avoid any dietary upsets.

Once the heifers have settled and become accustomed to the rape, the crop will be measured to calculate the yield in DM/ha terms, allowing us to calculate how far to move the fence daily.

We were thinking that the lighter half of the heifers would go to the rape, but after revising the situation, the decision was made to return the stronger heifers back to the crop.

The stronger heifers will hopefully be better able to manage the crop in terms of their capacity to eat and also to withstand any wet or cold weather that will come in the next few months.

Bolus

The heifers will be brought in next week and given a high-iodine bolus, which is recommended while grazing brassicas due to their low iodine content.

It is important also that cattle grazing forage crops are vaccinated against clostridial diseases due to soil contamination of the leaves, which can lead to issues with clostridia or blackleg.

Clostridial vaccination of calves is already part of the farm health plan and these heifers are double vaccinated already, so should be safe.

Lightest weanling heifers

The lightest 20 weanling heifers have remained indoors and are being fed good-quality pit silage along with a wholecrop silage mix of barley, oats and peas.

This is being topped up with 1.5kg of a 16% weanling ration. The remaining 17 bull weanlings have also been put on to wholecrop silage this week and are being offered 3kg of meal also.

Sheep breeding`

Breeding came to an end with the sheep flock two weeks ago after ewes spent five and a half weeks with rams and ewe lambs being joined for three and a half weeks.

There was huge activity observed in the first three weeks of breeding, with in excess of 90% of ewes marked to the first raddle colour of green.

Single-sire mating was practiced for the first three weeks, with matings recorded to the Sheep Ireland database.

Raddle colours were then changed and rams swapped around to protect the flock from any fertility issues with rams.

Mating activity for the second cycle was observed closely for the fear that any ram may have got burned out due to high activity.

A low level of repeat activity was seen, with only a few ewes in each bunch having been marked. This was probably helped by ewes being in super condition at the time of joining and rams were fed up to optimum body condition pre-mating.

We were unfortunate to lose a Charolais ram lamb in the final week of breeding. The ram presented no signs of sickness and was in good BCS.

Grass supplies remain good on the farm, with an average farm cover of 718kg DM/ha recorded this week.

Ewes will continue to graze through heavier covers on wetter land until after Christmas, when ewes will be housed and winter sheared.