Breeding: Late calves are hard to make money out of no matter what your system of beef is. In a weanling system selling calves in October young light calves are a big drag on the system.

While they may make a good price per kg, their light weight pulls back the gross output from that cow in a year. Keeping a 700kg cow to suck a calf for 5-6 months doesn’t make a lot of sense when she could be rearing that calf for 7-8 months.

At €2.50/kg and at an average weight gain of 1.1kg/day, a calf born on 1st April vs 1st May will be worth €82 more at weanling sales in the autumn.

Based on a 286 day gestation cows bred this week will be calving towards the end of April 2020.

Think about this. Is there an opportunity to pull back your calving spread by a week or two each year until you get back to where you want to be in terms of earlier calving?

It has been an excellent couple of months in terms of heat activity and conception rates seem to be good in earlier calving herds around the country.

By taking out the bull, you may only lose a couple of cows not bred and these can be replaced with earlier calving in-calf heifers.

Grass: It’s a tale of two halves this week across the country. The north and northwest have near perfect growing conditions with rain and heat most days over the past week.

This has meant after grass has come back quicker than expected on most farms. All fodder has now been saved on most drystock farms with GLAS meadows all cut last week.

In the south it’s a different story with rain needed badly on some farms.

On Tullamore Farm grass is very tight with just eight days ahead of stock.

Grazing silage headlands has bought a few days to allow grass recover. Calves have started to creep graze which means we can make the cows work a little harder in paddocks.

In autumn/winter calving herds, cows could be weaned, tightened up on a paddock and fed hay until rain and good grass growth returns.

Keeping calves performing is a must so make sure they have access to the best grass on the farm if at all possible. Creep feeding is also an option to keep calves gaining weight.

Open Days: The FBD Insurance Eurostar €200 replacement index competition national commercial herd winner Niall O'Meara will host a farm walk on Tuesday 16th July at 2pm.

The farm is located at Quansboro, Killimor, Co. Galway (H53 PX96). This event is a KT-approved event. The Irish Farmers Journal Tullamore Farm beef and sheep open day will take place on Wednesday 24th July from 11am-4pm (Postcode: R35 AT81).

Farm performance, breeding, grassland management, soil fertility and animal health will all be covered.

Live demos on sheep handling units and sheep dipping will also take place. Live workshops on cattle finishing, sheep footbathing, health and safety and animal handling and future CAP policy will also take place in the yard area. Admission is free and it’s a KT-approved event.