A generous amount of rain on Tuesday and Wednesday has helped the grass situation on Tullamore Farm – for now.

Early last week, farm manager Shaun Diver reported that he was only days away from having to buffer-feed hay to the suckler cows in an effort to slow down their rotation.

At that stage, the average farm cover had dipped below 500kg DM/ha and growth was slowing fast.

A day’s ahead figure of 8 looked ominous.

Thankfully though, the latest grass walk, completed on Friday, showed that the farm cover has bounced back to 614kg DM/ha and growth is also back above 60kg DM/ha.

Major boost

Another major boost is that demand on the farm has dropped from 42kg DM/ha/day back to 31kg DM/ha/day because the second-cut silage ground has come back into the rotation. There are no plans to take up any more ground for silage.

With these slight improvements, buffer feeding has been put on hold for now.

That said, if more rain doesn’t fall in the next seven days, things will likely start to tighten up again.

Cattle

All of the under-16-month bulls have now been sold.

Full data will be presented at the upcoming open day, but, in the meantime, Adam Woods gave a brief synopsis of their performance, and the market, in this week’s paper.

Elsewhere on the cattle front, replacement heifers were dosed with a fendendazol-based product this week after a number of animals were found to be coughing.

These were also weighed going through the crush and their average weight was 485kg.

That’s a gain of 0.92kg/day since they left the redstart and went to grass.

This week coming, the plan is to dose and weigh all of the suckler calves.

Cows will also be weighed as part of the requirements of BEEP. Some calves will also be genotypes as part of BDGP.

Sheep

Thirty-three lambs were drafted for slaughter this week. The average carcase weight was 20.1kg and they came into an average price of €104.58/head.

Eighty-four lambs have been drafted this year to date.

So far, lamb grading seems to be slightly better this year thanks to the introduction of Texel breeding.

All lambs were weaned this week. At the time, they received a worm dose, a cobalt bullet and they were foot-bathed, as scalds were starting to creep in.

Thankfully, maggots have not been an issue yet, so the application of Click pour-on seems to have done the job.

Ewes are now fully dried off and are grazing on bare paddocks.

Open day

The Irish Farmers Journal Beef & Sheep open day on Tullamore Farm will take place on Wednesday 24 July from 11am-4pm, Eircode R35 AT81.

Farm performance, breeding, grassland management, soil fertility and animal health will all be covered.

Live demos on sheep handling units and sheep dipping will also take place.

Live workshops on cattle finishing, sheep foot-bathing, health and safety and animal handling and future CAP policy will also take place in the yard area. Admission is free and it’s a KT-approved event.