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Management practices in Newford Farm, Athenry, Co Galway, have been focused in recent weeks on wet weather management and trying to prolong the grazing season.
Continual high rainfall has made this hard to achieve, with farm manager Matthew Murphy explaining that over 130mm of rain fell in both July and August, with 60mm more in the first two weeks of September the tipping point for the farm.
At this stage, meal feeding was introduced to all heifers and built up to 5kg per day
“Conditions were getting harder and harder to deal with from August onwards. Splitting paddocks and moving animals faster through the rotation helped, but it got harder to go back into paddocks that suffered some damage in the previous grazing. It got to a stage at the start of September where we had no option but to start housing cattle.”
Weaning was always set to commence in early February-born calves at the start of September, with the aim of reducing grass demand to help build autumn covers, while also optimising health in weanlings by getting calves back outdoors. Weaning cull cows early was also a target to get cows ready for sale at an earlier date.
While weaning commenced as planned, the frequency by which it took place was accelerated by the deterioration in ground conditions. A batch of 27 cows, which included all cull cows identified, were housed on Monday 11 September. These were followed by a batch of 33 cows on Wednesday 13 September, with both of these batches removed from the main block in Newford which was becoming increasingly difficult to deal with.
This left two batches of cows and calves outdoors, first-calvers and late-calvers (with the exception of cull cows). These are grazing the driest area of the farm on the Raheen block. The fact that two cuts of silage were taken from this area and it has not been grazed since spring is helping ground conditions. These groups have this block almost fully grazed, with weaning commencing in the coming days.
Weaning process
The weaning process has been very straightforward. Creep feed was offered to calves in advance of weaning to help get calves accustomed to a change of diet at weaning.
Calves also received a worm dose to ensure a clean bill of health from lungworm.
At weaning, cows and calves were housed side-by-side in the slatted shed, with cows offered straw and calves offered silage and 1kg concentrates. Extra gates were tied to the dividing gates to prevent suckling through the dividing gate.
Calves were kept separate from cows for 36 hours and then allowed to suckle once. After suckling, the cows were removed to another shed while calves were housed in a straw-bedded shed.
Lime was applied to slats daily following scraping to help reduce the risk of mastitis. This was the weaning practice also used in 2016 and has been equally successful so far in 2017, with calves settling quickly.
The plan was to get calves back outdoors as soon as weather and ground conditions allowed, with the aim to optimise animal health by getting calves settled back at grass. Turnout was delayed until this week due to ground conditions. Feeding will continue at a rate of 1kg/head daily.
It was also hoped to get cows back outdoors for a period, but this is looking increasingly unlikely.
Calf performance
Calves were also weighed prior to weaning to get an update on performance, with results detailed in Table 1.
Male calves, which should be noted were castrated on 27 July, weighed 303kg on average, having achieved very positive performance of 1.3kg, with the heaviest calves weighing up to 390kg. Heifer calves averaged 276kg, with an average daily gain of 1.23kg.
Housing steers and heifers
Heavy rainfall also greatly hampered grazing of heifers on the Gortnahown land block, which is the heaviest land type on the farm and steers on Tuohy’s land block, which was added to the farm in 2017. The farm has been working since the start of August on a planned finishing programme, with the aim of maximising the number of animals for finishing off grass.
At this stage, meal feeding was introduced to all heifers and built up to 5kg per day. It was estimated at the time feeding commenced that there would be in the region of 17 heifers (10 born on the farm and seven replacement heifers that didn’t make the grade for breeding) that would not be capable of finishing off grass, leaving a potential figure of 31 heifers to finish off grass.
This target is still on track, but with grass utilisation suffering and field conditions becoming unsuitable for trough feeding, a decision was taken to house the 10 lightest heifers (averaging 450kg to 500kg) in mid-September, while the seven replacement heifers were sold.
This reduced numbers for feeding and allowed troughs to be placed on the farm roadway, which greatly cut down on damage around feed troughs.
Grass demand was also reduced by the first nine heifers drafted for slaughter two weeks ago. Their slaughter performance is detailed in Table 2, with heifers averaging 300kg carcase weight and an average kill-out percentage of 52%.
There is a percentage of the remaining 22 heifers that could potentially be slaughtered immediately, but these animals are being delayed from drafting to try to come as near as possible to reaching 300kg carcase weight.
A similar practice was carried out with the 2016-born steers. There were 27 animals identified as needing to be housed to be finished and these animals were not receiving meal at grass.
These animals were housed on 8 September, following 178 days at grass and recording an average weight of 521kg on 5 September. At 17.5 months of age, they achieved an average daily gain since birth of 0.88kg. They are now being built up to 5kg concentrates, with access to top-quality silage with a target slaughter date of around Christmas.
Ground conditions are difficult, with management decisions based on trying to keep animals for finishing off grass outdoors.
According to Teagasc’s Michael Fagan, the remaining 20 steers weighed 612kg at the last weighing on 5 September and these animals have also been receiving 5kg concentrates at grass.
Matthew says that there is about two weeks of grass remaining for these animals, during which time the majority of steers should reach slaughter condition.
At weighing, the steers were aged 17.5 months on average and achieved an average daily gain since birth of 1.05kg.
Future plans
Attention is also turning to the spring, with the first paddocks earmarked for grazing closed in the coming weeks.
This is vital to implement following another year’s positive breeding performance and the demand that will apply on grass supplies next spring.
Scanning at the start of August revealed 93 out of the 99 cows put forward for breeding (four of the 103 cows’ rearing calves were not put forward due to reasons for culling) scanned in-calf. Within this, there are four cows carrying twin calves, similar to the situation in 2016.
The farm practised a 10-week breeding period, consisting of six weeks of AI by farm manager Matthew Murphy followed by four weeks of breeding with the two stock bulls.
Looking closer at the figures, Matthew says 64 cows held to first service, with 18 holding to the second service, while the two stock bulls served 11 cows.
A decision has since been taken on the back of two years’ positive breeding performance with AI to sell the two stock bulls and move to 100% AI in 2018.
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