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Calving performance
This was one of the highlights of 2017. There were 112 cows to calve on Tullamore Farm in 2017. Cows were condition-scored prior to calving and fed accordingly. Cows over condition score three were fed straw along with silage, while cows at the target score of 2.5 were fed silage ad-lib.
One hundred grams of a good-quality dry cow mineral was fed costing €26 per 20kg bag eight weeks prior to calving. Cows were also fed 0.5kg of soya bean meal six weeks prior to calving. This was to ensure adequate protein in the diet and good supply of colostrum for newborn calves.
Eighty-two cows calved unassisted, 20 cows required some assistance, seven cows required veterinary assistance and there were three C-sections. Two calves were lost during calving time. One was lost at calving, a 67kg Limousin calf which probably should have been a section.
The other was found dead at six weeks in the field. A post mortem was completed with a diagnosis of liver ulcers being the cause of death.
National open day
The gates of Tullamore Farm were opened for the first time on Tuesday 26 July 2017 for its first national open day. Over 3,500 people attended on the day to see how the farm was being set up and hear from the Irish Farmers Journal livestock specialist team on how the farm will be managed and the production system that was chosen to run on the farm.
Stands on grassland management, breeding, financial plans and the sheep system were all presented on the day. The open day concluded with a forum discussion in the yard area where Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed, IFA president Joe Healy and Irish Farmers Journal editor Justin McCarthy discussed the future of the beef industry and current issues affecting farmers.
Part of the huge crowd that attended the Tullamore Farm open day in July.
Launch of project and signing lease
After two years of negotiations, a lease was finally signed on Tullamore Farm in January 2017. The lease was based on a standard IFA master lease.
It has been drawn up for 15 years between Tullamore Farm Ltd and the farm owners, the Grogan family.
The land cost is €140/acre, with a land rent review built into the lease in 2022 and 2027, when beef price will be taken into account in any change to land rental payments.
BPS payment is leased from the farm owners and 100% of this payment will be paid to the farm owners.
All other production-related payments like the ANC payment and BDGP payment will remain with Tullamore Farm Ltd. If there is a penalty as a result of a cross-compliance inspection, Tullamore Farm Ltd will incur this cost.
The agreement around capital expenditure costs on fencing, drinkers, shed adaptions and roadways are that Tullmaore Farm Ltd will pay 60% of these costs and the farm owners will pay 40% of these costs.
Suckler calf weight gains
The 2017 crop of calves has performed very well on Tullamore Farm. On the last weighing, which took place on 6 October, male calves weighed 302kg and gained 1.22kg/day since birth. Heifer calves weighed 276kg and gained 1.11kg/day since birth.
Calves were born in February, March and April with an average date of birth of 9 March 2017. Calves were not supplemented up to 6 October, with meal feeding starting after this two weeks prior to weaning.
Grass growth
While 2017 will go down as a difficult year for grazing, Tullamore Farm performed very well in terms of grass production on paddocks. The average growth across the farm was 10.4t/ha, with an average of 8.2t grazed grass and 2.2t DM of silage grown across all paddocks.
The best paddock on the farm grew 18t of DM, while the worst-performing paddock on the farm grew 4t. At the planned stocking rate of 2.7 LU/ha, the farm needs to grow 14t DM/ha on an annual basis. With 80% of the farm reseeded, it’s hoped that this target will be met in 2018. Soil fertility issues are being corrected on a continuous basis, with potassium being the biggest concern. Eighty per cent of the farm was deficient for potassium at the last soil sampling in December 2016.
Tetany and mortality rate
Three cows have been lost in total since cows came on to the farm in October 2016. The first cow was lost in March with tetany. Cows had been supplemented with cal-mag at turnout along with some meal but this had ceased prior to this. The second cow was lost after calves were dehorned.
Cows were separated from calves to dehorn and this probably increased stress levels and led to the tetany incident. These cows had access to high-magnesium licks.
To eliminiate further issues, straw was put out in round feeders while cows were grazing very lush paddocks after this incident. Flow-mag was also included in drinkers.
The third cow was lost in August. This cow was being fed 2kg of a beef nut at grass. While symptoms appeared like tetany, a specific cause of death was unable to be determined.
Two suckler calves were lost in spring, one at calving and one at six weeks of age. Sixty-one dairy cross calves were purchased in March and artificially reared on the farm.
Unfortunately, in May one calf got caught up in an electric fence during the night and had to be euthanised the following morning. During weighing in December, a 350kg bull calf slipped and broke his leg above his knee. Unfortunately as the break was above the knee, a cast would not work and the weanling had to be put down.
Breeding performance
The 2017 breeding season on Tullamore Farm will be one to be forgotten. Breeding started off very well, with AI carried out for four weeks. Submission rate was good at 80% in the four weeks given our spread-out calving pattern.
Three stock bulls were purchased in early March 2017 to serve cows after the four weeks of AI from mid-May onwards. Two Limousin bulls and one Aberdeen Angus bull were purchased.
All bulls were fertility-tested prior to purchase.
Bulls were turned out on 22 May and after three weeks’ breeding a number of repeats were identified with one bull in particular. The two Limousin bulls were fertility-tested. One came back as infertile, with the other coming back with a 2/5 result.
The advice was to stand off the two bulls and fertility-test again in 10 days. On the second test, the bull that tested infertile remained infertile and the second bull returned to fertile status.
Scanning results at the end of August came back very disappointing, with 26 out of 120 cows not in-calf. The decision has been made to cull all empty cows and slaughter them in January.
Silage quality
Silage quality was pretty average on Tullamore Farm for 2017, ranging from 58DMD to 71DMD across the board.
There were a number of reasons for this. As fencing wasn’t completed in spring 2017, all silage fields weren’t grazed and those that were grazed were not grazed as tight as would be recommended prior to closing.
Silage fields on the farm had a lot of weed grasses present and some dock issues. To compound all these issues, the main crop of silage was delayed in harvest by about two weeks due to poor weather conditions.
Some of the crop had lodged prior to harvest and this would have reduced quality considerably. While some very good-quality silage was made off paddocks, this was in short supply.
While medium-quality silage is perfect for dry spring-calving suckler cows, weanlings, finishing cattle and ewes need good-quality silage.
Concentrate feeding levels have been increased to weanlings getting poorer-quality silage and early turnout will be critical to ensure that these weanlings hit target weights.
As no sheep were present on the farm for much of the 2017 grazing season and there were no yearling progeny grazing, the grazing stocking rate for the farm was going to be quite low in 2017. The decision was taken in spring to purchase 61 calves at two to three weeks of age and rear these through to beef at 20-22 months. Calves were purchased from seven different farms and were reared indoors on artificial milk replacer. The rearing phase went well with no issues with scour or pneumonia. Calves were on 2kg of concentrates at weaning and were turned outdoors in May and continued on 1kg of concentrate during the grazing season.
Dairy-cross beef calves on Tullamore Farm were 15kg behind target on 1 November.
Calves were grazed on reseeded pasture near the yard. Weight gain at grass has been a little disappointing with calves gaining 0.71kg/day from birth to 6 October. The target for these calves was 230kg on 1 November. Calves were about 15kg off this target and will need to make this up during the 2018 grazing season. Early turnout will be key to achieving this. These weanlings are currently grazing kale outdoors and should be able to go to grass early in spring.
Beef trends: firm start to 2018 beef trade
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