Beef Management: turnout, fertiliser plans and keeping calves healthy

Grass: While grazing conditions are far from perfect at the moment in most parts of the country, it is giving a pretty dry week so try and put some plans in place to get some stock out if you can.

It’s a win-win. First of all, you will reduce your costs by moving animals from a silage and meal diet to a grass diet. Grazing a 350kg weanling can reduce your costs by half. Secondly, weanlings can double their liveweight gain by being turned outdoors on early spring grass. Weight gains of over 1kg/day can be achieved on grass while weanlings can struggle to gain 0.5kg/day indoors on a silage diet. The last thing is kickstarting growth. By grazing off paddocks, this will kickstart growth and make sure you have enough grass when demand rises in the coming weeks. You can cease meal feeding to weanlings if you think you will be able to turn them out.

Allowing animals into a yard area before turnout can help let off some steam and letting them out hungry will also help them settle better. Getting fertiliser out when land is dry is also important. You should also be planning to have some nitrogen (N) spread if the weather stays dry and ground conditions improve. If phosphorus (P) and potash (K) is low, a compound fertiliser will be a better option. Watery slurry is a good option on fields grazed off early. Try and aim slurry for silage ground as silage crops are the hardest in terms of P and K off takes.

Fertiliser: For farmers who haven’t spread any nitrogen yet, use the next dry spell to get it out. Not getting fertiliser out could have an impact on grass supply later on when heavy covers are grazed if nitrogen is not spread.

On an average stocked beef farm at 140kg organic N/ha the recommendations is to have 27 units N/ac spread in March to meet grass demand with another 20 units/ac spread in April. Regardless of price, the advice on fertiliser requirements doesn’t change.

April and May are two of the best grass-growing months in the year. Urea offers by far the best value in N fertiliser at the moment but needs damp cold conditions for it to work at maximum efficiency.

March generally brings lots of these conditions. Some farmers will argue that urea doesn’t work well on their farm, but research does not support this argument. What probably happened was that soil pH, phosphorus or potassium status wasn’t at Index 3 – and any fertiliser spreading isn’t going to be efficient if soil fertility isn’t right. At current prices the cost per kg/N (February 2025) is:

Calving issues: Calving seems to be going well around the country. The only issue is that weather hasn’t been that conducive to turnout. This will mean the risk is there for disease build up, higher straw usage and labour input.

If you do manage to turn out cows and calves it’s important to keep a close eye on young calves outdoors. Keep an eye for navel infections and make sure all calves are sucking. Try and keep young calves in sheltered paddocks as weather conditions will likely take a few turns in March.