We are now just over one month into the breeding season for our spring calvers. Despite the poor weather in early May, we went ahead as planned and turned the stock bulls out on 15 May. Since then, good grazing conditions have resulted in cows putting on condition, so we are confident that a large percentage of cows should now be in-calf. Our calving period has been much tighter than other years. Everything calved over 11.5 weeks from 13 March through to 31 May. We think this can be tightened further this year.
We are now just over one month into the breeding season for our spring calvers. Despite the poor weather in early May, we went ahead as planned and turned the stock bulls out on 15 May. Since then, good grazing conditions have resulted in cows putting on condition, so we are confident that a large percentage of cows should now be in-calf.
Our calving period has been much tighter than other years. Everything calved over 11.5 weeks from 13 March through to 31 May. We think this can be tightened further this year.
As the number of cows calving in the early stages of the calving period increases, so does the amount of time these cows have to recover before breeding. This should lead to continuous improvements in fertility every year.
Our average calving index for the spring calvers has decreased from 395 days in 2015 to 371 days in 2016, so we are moving in the right direction. We intend removing the bulls on 1 August this year.
Stock bulls
We have three stock bulls that are currently running with three groups of cows. Bull breeds include a Simmental (Omorga Baron), Limousin (Ballykelly Iggy) and Stabiliser (Crebilly Panda). They are all fit and working well to date.
Both the Limousin and Stabiliser bulls were used last year and have produced good-quality calves with no major calving difficulties. The Simmental bull was purchased this year directly from another programme farmer, Oliver McKenna. The bull now has daughters calved down in Oliver’s herd.
We have found it difficult to source bulls with good accuracy for milk without compromising on other traits. We have seen each of our stock bulls’ dams, or in the Simmental’s case, his daughters, which gives us some confidence in their breeding. The use of three breeds will increase hybrid vigour in cows and give some benefit in improved milking ability.
Replacement heifers
We have 19 suitable replacements this year. They have all been synchronised and served to fixed-time AI using the red Angus bull Lanigan Red Deep Canyon. The Stabiliser bull has been used to sweep up any repeats from 14 to 28 days after AI. We are happy to be ruthless with these heifers this year. Any heifer not in-calf will be held over to help build numbers in our autumn-calving herd.
Bull beef
The 2015 spring-born male calves retained as bulls have now been slaughtered. Nine bulls were finished at an average 392kg carcase weight at 14.4 months. This gives an average carcase gain from birth of 0.89kg/day.
Finishing spring born males as bulls has the potential to be a very expensive enterprise. However, we are fortunate to have enough good-quality silage to feed to these bulls from housing to finish. This allowed us to use rolled barley for the majority of the feeding period.
Barley was offered ad-lib along with the silage, allowing us to keep costs as low as possible. We were happy with cattle performance in this system.
Longer term, as cow numbers increase, we intend finishing most males as young bulls. First-cut silage was harvested on 25 May and will allow for a similar feeding regime.
Steers and autumn-born bulls
The remaining 2015 spring-born male calves are being finished as steers. They were stored over the winter and are now grazing along with the 2015 autumn-born bulls.
Despite good weight gains since turnout, they are well behind where we would like them to be at this point of the grazing season.
Autumn-born bulls are now averaging just 350kg liveweight and steers just over 400kg. The main reason for this is down to the spread in birth dates. Too many steers were born in June and bulls in November.
Gradually moving more of the autumn calvers forward to August and spring calvers to March will help improve these weights in future.
Grazing
Despite our best efforts, grass has been very difficult to manage over the past month, with some paddocks inevitably becoming too stemmy. We have taken out paddocks each week to help manage covers and keep grass quality as high as possible. Some paddocks were not suitable for baling and topped instead.
After two weeks of some less than desirable grazing, we are now back on track with regard to grass quality for all cattle groups.
Animal health
Having bought in breeding stock from different sources in recent years, we have gone with a belt and braces approach to disease control. Most controls have worked to date.
However, despite vaccinating calves to control pneumonia, it has still been an issue in one group over the past month. It has resulted in a visible check in calf performance.
It is difficult to give some animals special treatment to overcome this poorer thrive and still get their dams bulled.
We will reassess this over the next month and, if needed, we will introduce some creep feed to this batch.
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