Newford update: final plans in place for breeding 2019

The 2019 breeding season will commence on Newford Farm, the 100-cow suckler-to-beef herd located in Athenry Co Galway, on Monday 22 April.

Cows and calves which were grazing in the Gort Na Habhainn block have returned to the Newford grazing block in the last week and have been joined to two grazing groups. Vasectomised bulls have also settled into their new surrounds and will be joined with cows on Monday.

Sire selection

Charolais sires dominate the 2019 bull team, with three selected for use. The criteria used for selecting sires has been tweaked slightly – the upper limit for calving difficulty increases by 1% to 9% for large mature cows which have recorded no previous calving difficulty.

This has opened up the opportunity of using the Charolais sire Hideal, which has a higher predicted carcase weight figure and better conformation score than Fiston, a sire that the farm has recorded good results.

Fiston will be used on medium-sized mature cows while the criteria set for first- and second-calvers is a calving difficulty upper limit of 5%. This will see the Charolais sire Bivouac used on first- and second-calvers.

The other criteria used are reliability in excess of 80%, a predicted carcase weight figure of at least 40kg for cows and 30kg for first calvers and a cost per straw of less than €15.

Table 1 details the breakdown of sires and their predicted performance.

The Limousin sire Ewdenvale Ivor has been selected for use on replacement heifers. The well-proven sire was used on the farm in 2018 and gave rise to no calving difficulty issues while calves also appear to be coming on well. His predicted performance is also listed in Table 1.

Heat detection and AI

As mentioned above, two vasectomised bulls arrived on the farm in the last week. These had undergone a quarantine period before arriving and were also given a full health check and vaccination programme.

The bulls will be fitted with a chin ball while cows will also be tail painted with the colour changing after each service. Cows will be supervised four to five times daily to aid heat identification.

Some farmers have previously queried if this is required given vasectomised bulls are running with cows.

Previous manager Matthew Murphy found that on days when there were high numbers of cows in heat, there was an infrequent risk of possibly missing a cow which would have been shy and steering clear of the other cows in heat while the vasectomised bull could have been focused on these.

Experience from previous years shows the most common time for cows expressing heat has been early in the morning and late in the evening.

Aidan Heavey has been monitoring cows and recording heats over the last two weeks and reports a good level of activity.

The farm will continue with once-a-day AI carried out at 12 noon. Any cow that is in heat in the evening or morning will be served. Cows that are still in heat at the last check that evening or the following morning will be AI’d again.

Condition of cows

There is just one cow left to calve. There are 108 live calves on the ground, including three sets of twins. Two cows died, so a calf from two sets of twins was fostered on to young cows that lost calves, while the other three cows will be culled.

Cows were weighed and condition-scored on 10 April and averaged 546kg liveweight with an average condition score of 2.2.

As reflected in Table 2, the second-calvers are still feeling the effects of a difficult 2018 and are running below target body condition score. These and the first-calvers will be monitored throughout the season and a decision will be taken if required post-breeding to separate these for preferential treatment.