TThe last of our cows were housed on Thursday 29 October with in-calf heifers brought inside. The cows were housed by 18 October.

The only animals still at grass are a group of 18 dairy-bred calves which weigh little over 200kg. There are six heifers in the group, along with 12 bullocks, and they are doing a great job of cleaning off grass left behind by the cows.

Being able to hold cows outside until late October takes a lot of pressure off housing, particularly slurry storage.

Paddock setup

While it was wet during recent weeks, we managed to keep cows moving to fresh grass every day which helped to avoid ground being damaged.

This year, we installed extra drinkers and this made a huge difference to grazing management during autumn.

With extra drinkers, we were able to split paddocks into daily or two-day paddocks, each with its own water supply.

Also, we were able to set up fences so cattle were not walking back over grazed ground to access water, thereby cutting down the risk of poaching.

We have 52 spring-calving cows and calves housed and eating good-quality silage. Cows are running as one group indoors, regardless of having a bull calf or heifer calf at foot.

As we don’t start calving until the middle of March, we are planning to leave the calves on stronger cows for another couple of weeks.

This should stop cows from gaining too much condition. Our cow shed has limited feeding space, so restricting silage intakes to manage body condition is not an option.

There are a handful of cows that are slightly thinner than we would like, so these animals were weaned on Tuesday.

Using Charolais breeding has increased weight gains in the herd. Calves gained 1.31kg/day on the cow and averaged 303kg at 200 days of age.

Calf creep

We have always been under pressure for housing space during winter. This year, we have made a few small adjustments to housing and these have made a big difference already. We made a new opening in the wall between the cow shed and the straw bedded house which we normally use to pen cows at calving time.

The straw bedded house is now being used as a calf creep, with the old calf creep giving a bit more space for cows.

It took a few days for calves to get used to the new creep gate, but they are now making great use of the pen.

Calves have access to top-quality silage and meal in the new creep area, whereas they had to compete with cows for silage in previous years.

First-cut silage was analysed and the results were 73.1% D-Value, 49% dry matter, 11.7 ME and 17.4% crude protein.

Calf performance

This year’s calf crop has performed well. Calves were weighed at housing and across the group, they averaged 1.31kg/day from birth to 200 days of age with a housing weight of 303kg liveweight.

This makes this year’s calf crop 20kg heavier at 200 days of age compared to last year. There are a lot more Charolais sired calves this year compared to Angus and Hereford bred animals, which is helping increase 200-day weight.

Positive scanning for spring calving

Our suckler herd has been pregnancy-scanned and we had a successful breeding period this summer.

We put 34 heifers to the bull and they are all settled in-calf. The heifers ran in two groups, with Angus-type animals running with a Hereford bull and the Hereford-type heifers running with an Angus bull.

Heifers are set to calve down over six weeks according to scanning results, starting around 17 March. We are under movement restrictions, but the plan is to sell some of the heifers as replacements later this winter.

Cows

There were 52 cows bred this summer. The cows were originally set up for breeding to AI using a fixed-time synchronisation programme.

Cows were inseminated to continental bulls at the end of June, again with Charolais being the predominant sire choice.

The AI had mixed success with around 52% of cows holding to service.

The cows were then split in two groups and run with the stock bulls which caught the majority of animals on the second cycle.

Scanning results showed 49 cows settled in-calf from the 52 animals bred. However, we are planning on scanning the three empty animals again.

They are showing no signs of breeding activity and scanning may have been too early to confirm a pregnancy.

Cows have been bred to calve down around the first week of April and scanning dates again indicate a busy six week calving period.

First draft of bullocks slaughtered

The first group of 2019-born bullocks was slaughtered last week. There were 13 animals sold at just over 18 months of age.

The group averaged 332kg carcase weight which is a big increase on last year, when bullocks were more typically 290kg to 300kg deadweight.

These bullocks are the first animals to be killed from our newest Angus stock bull, which has good EBVs for terminal traits and this is coming through in carcase data.

The bullocks were housed on 6 October and finished on first-cut silage and 3kg/day of concentrate. Some of the cattle could have finished slightly earlier as they were running into fat class 4. However, the group was treated for internal parasites and were sold as soon as the withdrawal period expired.

There are another 18 stores being intensively fed for slaughter, but they are unlikely to be ready for a few weeks yet.