With the weather turning colder and ground conditions deteriorating, we weaned the spring calves last week.

In total, we weaned 82 calves from 86 cows to the bull last summer.

We are very pleased with that performance as it gives us 95% of cows that went to the bull weaning a calf. Table 1 shows how this has changed from last year.

While we were weaning, the calves had a full treatment programme, with a doramectin pour-on for worms, a clostridial vaccine and Rispoval 4&P administered for respiratory infections.

To make sure that treatments were right and to check on performance, we ran them across the scales at the same time.

Spring calves averaged 291kg at around 200 days old, meaning we have had daily liveweight gains averaging 1.2kg a day on the cow.

Calves have had a little creep but the bulk of this gain has come from their mothers, so we are pleased with how they have performed.

In the first couple of days after weaning, the calves were in a straw bedded pen of their own beside their mothers, to get over the weaning stress.

Once they were settled, we then moved them up on to the slats. The plan is for most of them to be sold in the spring, at around a year old.

Weaned Charolais calves

The smaller end of the calves and replacement heifers will be kept on and grazed next summer to be sold next autumn.

Summer calves

The summer calves are still outside on their mothers and we plan to keep them out for at least a month yet.

They are up on our hill ground on grazing that we deferred during the summer.

This has given the cows a good cover of grass to work away at just now and looking at the current grass supply, we will not start feeding them until next month.

The calves do have a creep to keep them going and to help with the transition once they are weaned. They will be treated the same as the spring calves come the time and again, the biggest will go off in the spring, with the smaller end staying on for the summer.

When we do start feeding the summer cows, we are planning to keep them on silage bales. The spring calvers have come in to the shed in ideal condition and neither need to gain, nor lose condition.

They are on a diet of silage and straw, giving them maintenance levels of energy.

We are going to work two different rations for the young cattle this winter. Those that are going off in the spring are going to be fed to grow at 1kg a day.

Those staying to graze next summer are going to be fed to grow at around 0.6-0.7kg a day to maximise the gain that they do from grass next summer.

The main difference between the two rations will be that we will feed a higher protein ration to those that are for sale in the spring to drive their growth rate.

Ration calculations last week proposed spending £25/head on protein to get £50/head extra weight gain – a good return on our investment.

Harvest

Like everyone else, our harvest was a bit of a drawn-out affair, with combining finished at home on 29 September and we finished baling the bought-in straw on 14 October.

The barley was a bit disappointing this year, after a promising start.

In an average year, we would see yields around the 5t/ha mark and earlier in the season barley was looking like it would do it again. It was desiccated at the right stage but then the weather took a turn for the worse.

By the time that the combine got in, the barley had been sprayed off for three weeks and we thought that losses were bad. Yields finished up at 68t from 16ha or 4.25t/ha, ¾t/ha back on the average.

Walking the fields now they are cleared shows a lot of heads on the ground. With it being so dry and dead, the straw also broke down more than expected and straw yields ended being back by around 1 bale/ha.

Once the barley was in the shed, we got in our local bruising contractor and he rolled it and treated it with Maxammon at the same time.

This has worked well, with the grain sitting at 20% moisture with no heat in it and an analysis has come back showing that it is sitting at 14.5% protein (dry matter).

We are now looking to next year and have identified a few fields for attention. This winter, we will soil-sample most of the land that we didn’t use for grazing this summer and get some lime on to it. It also has a couple of drains that need fixed in it as well, so we will get that done too.

The plan is to use these fields for a grazing rotation next year, so we will invest in them this winter to give us good-quality grass for next spring.

In-calf heifers

We have picked up three in-calf heifers, due next spring. Two are Hereford cross and one is a Limousin-cross Shorthorn. They are due in March and averaged £1,830.

We recently sold our old Aberdeen Angus bull that we had bought to go on heifers. He was bought as a six-year-old three years ago for £1,100.

Just before he went off, we counted up and he has covered around 80 cows for us over the three years, between heifers and filling in when other bulls have had problems.

When he was sold, he realised £1,430.

He has been replaced with another six-year-old bull, this time a Shorthorn that we bought privately from a neighbour, who was only selling him due to the fact that he was starting to come back on his daughters.

Again, he will mainly be used on the first-calving heifers. We had to pay a little more for him than the Angus, at £1,400 but here’s hoping he works the same magic as the last lad and we can get £1,700 for him in three years’ time.

Read more

Farm Profit Programme: winter approaches in the Cairngorms

Farm Profit Programme: combining is finished despite challenging conditions