BETTER Farm NI: spring calving draws to a close

We are coming close to the end of spring calving, with 16 of 86 cows left to calve. Our first calf arrived on 26 February and we have 65 live calves from 70 cows to date.

Any losses we had were sent to the lab for post-mortem, which did not confirm any definite cause of death. We should be finished calving by 23 April according to scanning records.

Cows remained housed after calving up until last week. Conditions underfoot have been OK over the last few weeks.

However, nights were still very cold and with limited shelter, we were worried about putting young calves out after being acclimatised to the shed.

Another factor for delayed turnout was to cut down the risk of tetany in freshly calved cows. However, as of last week, we have been turning cows and calves out to grass, with over 40 outfits now grazing.

There are also close to 150 young stock making their way around the grazing platform, but re-growth has been slow to materialise.

Autumn cows

The autumn cows are weaned and on a low-maintenance diet of hay and straw. These cows will be turned out to some of our rougher, wetter grazing ground at a later stage.

Breeding finished in mid-December for the autumn herd. We ran 30 cows to our Simmental and Stabiliser stock bulls, plus 10 heifers to the Limousin bull.

After scanning, we have 30 confirmed in-calf, which is 75% of cows bred. This is disappointing.

Stock bulls went in by mid-October and were removed by mid-December, which is a breeding season of approximately eight weeks.

On the plus side, we will have a very compact-calving autumn herd this year. The cows that scanned empty are already at grass to gain flesh, before culling.

Youngstock

Our 2019 spring-born heifers are all at grass. They averaged 330kg in March. We had hoped they would be heavier, but we are confident they will grow out on spring grass.

In saying that, there is no shortage of heifers to choose from for breeding this year. If the whole group averages at least 0.8kg of daily liveweight gain at grass, they will be on target to hit a 380kg by mid-May when breeding starts.

The strongest heifers are running separately with breeding in mind. Within this group, eight heifers were over 400kg when weighed in March.

All heifers got a mineral bolus to cover trace elements. They have also been vaccinated for BVD, Lepto and clostridial diseases.

Spring-born bulls ready for drafting

There are 28 bulls born during spring 2019 on farm at the moment and the first draft will be sold for slaughter this month.

Concentrate levels have gradually built up since housing, with animals now on 7kg/day plus 15kg of silage, with the exception of one pen of younger bulls on 5kg.

Our target carcase weight is 380kg and this is an area we want to improve on. Carcase weight increased from 347kg in 2018 to 361kg in 2019 and we hope this trend continues. Daily liveweight gain across all 28 bulls is 1.4kg/day.

Autumn bulls

The 2019 autumn bull calves performed really well this year, averaging 1.3kg of daily liveweight gain since birth.

These calves have now been weaned and penned for intensive feeding. Some farms graze these animals for a period of time to reduce meal costs. However, we have tried this and it just does not work on our farm. Like the spring bulls, meal levels will be built up from 3kg/day.

The group was weighed on 1 April and averaged 329kg. The plan is to slaughter most of these bulls this autumn.

Heifers

Just two beef heifers born during spring 2018 remain on farm, along with beef heifers born in autumn 2018. These animals are still housed and eating 6kg of ration plus 70+ D-value silage. They are being slaughtered as they come fit, with the group averaging 580kg at present.

Grazing conditions are fine but grass growth has been slow to get going. We measure grass weekly and growth rates did not break double figures until the last week of March.

Luckily, there was a good cover of grass to turn cattle out, but it is disappearing. Cattle on the ground have a demand of around 40kg/DM/ha per day, but growth was only 24kg/DM/ha. As a result, grazing days ahead are diminishing and there were only nine days in front of animals by the weekend. However, temperatures are rising and we are confident growth will start to surge in the days ahead.

Having the ground grazed tight is a good thing, as it will maintain grass quality across the platform when growth rates do pick up.

Most of the gazing ground has received one bag per acre of protected urea (38%). Most of the grazing ground surrounding the home yard received slurry in early February. It was applied using a dribble bar at 2,500 gallons per acre.

Silage ground

Slurry and fertiliser has been applied to our silage ground. All we need now is some heat. Slurry was applied as early as 6 February and thereafter as conditions permitted.

Although growth has been slow to materialise this spring, there is a notable difference in fields that got this early slurry.

Slurry was applied at about 2,500 gallons per acre and as most of the silage ground is at optimum, or above, for phosphate (P) and potash (K), we went with straight nitrogen.

It is our second year using protected urea. On a per-unit-of-nitrogen basis, it is cheaper than CAN, but more expensive than standard urea. However, there is a much larger window to apply protected urea compared to the regular product. It was applied at a rate of two bags per ace on silage ground. Combined with 23 units of N from the slurry, silage ground has received around 100 units of N for first cut.

Read more

Way Out West: ‘I’ve 25 weanlings ready to go in the shed at the minute’

BETTER Farm NI: spring-calving cows go to grass in Antrim