Grass growth has taken off here in Tullamore Farm this week with a growth of 89kg recorded over the past seven days.
Demand is running at 51kg/ha/day and there is currently 13 days of grass ahead of stock. The average farm cover is 668kg/DM/ha and our current stocking rate on the grazing area is 3.71 livestock units or 2,562 kg/ha.
With this strong growth we have taken the decision to remove 7.2ha from the grazing area as round bales. This will be mowed on Wednesday and baled on Friday morning. There are also 7.12ha taken out for reseeding at the moment.
The 4ha that was reseeded with the Dalbo min-till machine on 20 April is progressing well. This got one bag of CAN/acre at the beginning of this week. A lot of spear thistles have appeared since seeding and these will be sprayed this week.
As the thistles have appeared in clumps, we will try to just spray the areas affected to avoid killing the clover.
Kale will be sowed over the next two weeks and this field will be sprayed off at the end of this week. AI will finish at the end of this week.
Breeding season
The breeding season continues on the farm too.
Some of the 70/87 cows have been submitted over the past 21 days which means submission rate was 80% in the AI group.
Overall submission is 96/125 or 77% after 21 days.
We have 15 heifers inseminated over the past three weeks also.
Our latest calved cows are with one of the Limousin bulls and 11 out of 23 of these have been bred over the past two weeks. Bulls will be turned out with approximately 41 cows/heifers each at the end of this week. Bulls will have chin ball harnesses fitted to record heats.