Tullamore Farm is now at its busiest time of year, with both calving and lambing in full swing on the farm.

Calving is progressing nicely on the farm, with 10 more calves born this week, bringing the overall total number calved to 55.

Farm manager Shaun Diver said: "Calving is going well. This week, we completely cleaned out the calving communal area and placed new straw bedding in the sheds.

"Looking back, the use of sawdust has really worked well on the farm. It has great soakage and works out cheaper than the use of straw.

"It would definitely be something I would like to introduce into the farm again in the future – it has saved a lot of straw.’’

Tullamore Farm has also seen its first set of lambs this week, with one of the heavier triplet-bearing ewes lambing down in the early hours of Thursday night.

She had been down with twin lamb disease for a few days. Unfortunately, the weakest lamb died a few hours after birth.

Shaun said: "She’s an older ewe, but she is beginning to pick up and start eating again. The remaining two lambs are currently being fed with additional colostrum to ensure they have sufficient amount of feed.”

The ewes' feed ration is continuing to be increased coming up to lambing, with the twin-bearing mature ewes being fed ration at a rate of 850g/day this week and the triplet-carrying ewes to a rate of 1,000g/day.

Singles continue with no concentrates and are being fed good-quality silage with a DMD of 75%.

Bulls weighed

This week, the bulls were also weighed. The older bulls were on 9kg of a weanling ration and are now transitioning to a high-maize bull beef finisher ration.

This will be increased over the coming weeks, with the plan to be ad-lib my mid-March. They currently weigh 540kg on average.

Turnout

Heavy rainfall has delay turnout, with only three first-calved heifers being released outdoors this week. There are now 15 cows and calves at grass at this stage.

Cows outdoors are receiving a high magnesium and copper bolus just before turnout.

Shaun said: "On the farm, we prioritise getting first-time calving heifers out to grass to ensure they get sufficient feed.

"They are calving down at two years old, so they need a bit of preferential treatment to ensure they come back bulling again early in the breeding season."

Grass

The grass cover this week on the farm is 683kg DM/ha, which has increased by 16kg DM/ha from last week’s grass cover.

Shaun said: "The average growth per day had deceased to 7kg, which is expected due to the large portion of rain over the last few days.

"I put out less than half a bag of urea/acre on about 30 acres last week, so hopefully growth will improve in the coming days."