Field work: dry weather has meant a lot of field work is currently taking place. It’s a great opportunity to get silage fertiliser out. Every year we talk about the importance of making good quality silage and how that will impact wintering costs and meal feeding levels. Now is the time to put together a plan to make good quality silage in 2025. Closing up fields this week and fertilising them is the first step. If 80 units of nitrogen/acre is spread this weekend, silage could be potentially cut around 20 May which should be before heading dates and lead to top quality silage.
Field work: dry weather has meant a lot of field work is currently taking place. It’s a great opportunity to get silage fertiliser out.
Every year we talk about the importance of making good quality silage and how that will impact wintering costs and meal feeding levels. Now is the time to put together a plan to make good quality silage in 2025. Closing up fields this week and fertilising them is the first step. If 80 units of nitrogen/acre is spread this weekend, silage could be potentially cut around 20 May which should be before heading dates and lead to top quality silage.
Have you checked fences and drinkers in advance of cattle getting out? Good ground conditions this week and next mean big numbers of stock will be moving outdoors so make sure fields are ready for them.
Breeding: Breeding is just around the corner on many early spring calving farms around the country. Some farmers use AI for a few weeks at the start to try and breed replacements and then use a terminal stock bull for the rest of the breeding season.
If using AI, good heat detection is extremely important to get good conception rates. Tail paint, vasectomised bulls and taking time to heat detect are all very important in achieving high conception rates. It sounds like a lot of work but is there an opportunity where you could leave calves inside and let cows out for a few weeks.
Twice a day sucking is proven in speeding up resumption to cycling and will result in better submission rates and earlier calves in 2026 if practiced.
While best results will be achieved using the AM/PM rule (cows seen in heat in morning are bred in evening and vice versa) some herds, including Tullamore Farm, are just inseminating cows once a day at mid-day and achieving good results.
Dairy sires: Some dairy calf-to-beef farmers are going to dairy farms with a proposal to use certain bulls and then agreeing to buy these calves back the following spring.
Some dairy farmers make their beef sire choices around easy calving and short gestation without paying any attention to carcase weight or conformation attributes but many are now looking to the beef traits of the bulls they use to make calves more saleable in spring.
Low carcase weight and poor conformation in the past have meant profitability of finishing these animals has been poor with very low carcase weights and poor grades being achieved from some of the sires being used.
This year there are some very decent margins being achieved from calves purchased in 2023 and 2024 at relatively small money. Is there potential to go to a neighbouring dairy farm with a list of sires to use. There are a number of bulls available that have good calving characteristics along with good carcase traits.
This could be a win-win arrangement where dairy calf to beef farmers get the calves they want and dairy farmers get an easy route to market for their calves next year.
Dairy farmers will be choosing bulls for the 2025 season in next few weeks so move now if you think it’s an option.
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