Calving is really starting to wind down here in Abbeyleix now, and to be honest there’s a bit of relief with that. We’ve just six cows left to calve now, but they’ll drag it out until around 20 April. The back end can feel like it goes on forever, even if the numbers are small.

Grass has gone well so far this spring. We have 85% grazed on the first round, with only two paddocks left to clean off.

They’re carrying covers of 1,300–1,400kg DM/ha at the minute, having really taken off over the last few weeks.

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Average farm cover is sitting at 823kg DM/ha, and growth for March came in around 30kg DM/ha/day, which isn’t bad considering the lack of real heat.

We’re in a good position heading into the second rotation. The first paddocks we grazed have covers around the 1,400kg mark as well, and we’ll be back into them early next week.

Ground has held up well, which has made life easier, and cows are out full-time now. We cut out silage last week, which is always a lift, though I’ve kept them on 5kg of meal for the time being as it’s still fairly cold.

If we get any sort of a rise in temperature, I’ll pull that back to 4kg.

Cows are milking well, doing about 28.5l at 4.77% fat and 3.54% protein. Somatic cell count is holding around 150,000, so no major issues there. We did have one cow with E coli mastitis last week and she got fairly sick, but thankfully she responded quickly to treatment and is back OK again, although the quarter is probably lost.

We weren’t without a few knocks either. We lost a cow to a twisted gut six days after calving, which was hard to take, and we also had a big strong bull calf born with part of the intestine missing that didn’t make it. You’d always get a bit of that, but it doesn’t make it any easier when it happens.

Clear TB test

On the plus side, we had a clear TB test, which was a big weight off the shoulders. It’s hard to relax fully, but it’s great to get that one clear.

The calf sheds have eased off a lot in the last fortnight. We’ve put 63 calves out to grass — 33 two weeks ago and another 30 this week — and that’s taken serious pressure off in terms of labour and bedding. They’re getting about 4l of milk now out in the field, along with calf crunch and straw.

I had them on 6l inside, but I’ve learned the hard way that they can go scoury if you leave them too high on milk once they start picking grass.

Most of the dehorning is done at this stage, with just a few of the younger calves left to finish off. I also went ahead and gave all the breeding stock their first shot of the bluetongue vaccine this week. It might turn out to be unnecessary, but I’d sooner be safe than sorry with it.

Fertiliser went out again this week as well. I spread 20 units of CAN per acre across the grazing ground, which brings us up to about 70 units of nitrogen per acre so far. The silage ground got spread too — three bags of 0-7-30 and four bags of CAN (26N + 4S) per acre — so it should be well set now for the first cut.

All in all, things are ticking along. Once we get the last few cows calved, it’ll be a matter of staying on top of the grass and trying to keep quality right.

As always at this time of year, a bit of heat would go a long way.