Watch: all systems go in Wexford

It seemed that every tractor in Wexford was working in fields last Monday. It was some change to the last time I drove to Ferns. That day, it was snowing and the news was dominated by the election results. This week, the sun was shining and the election results are all but forgotten about due to COVID-19.

The Breen farm is a busy place. Joe and his father, Mick, are going from 180 to 220 cows after taking on a neighbouring block this year. When I arrived they were out in the fields moving heifers, so I went looking at the regrowths on the grazed sections – it helped with the physical distancing.

As things stand, the average farm cover is low at 600kg/ha and Joe has 80% of the milking platform grazed. There is a cover of 700kg/ha on the highest paddock in the second rotation. Most of the paddocks that were grazed in February have covers of about 500kg/ha. I think it’s fair to say grass on these paddocks has the hardest work done and grass is at the stage where it will be ready to rock on if the conditions allow.

For the last four weeks, it was relying on root reserves for growth, but now it has sufficient leaf area to capture sunlight and convert that to energy through photosynthesis.

Most of the farm received a half bag/acre of urea in mid-January and another half bag/acre of urea in mid-February. One bag/acre of 14:16:0 was spread in March, so that’s 60 units/acre of nitrogen spread to date. The plan is to spread the farm with a half bag/acre of protected urea in the next few days, bringing the total nitrogen spread up to 83 units/acre by 1 April.

Joe is allocating the cows 9kg of grass and 5kg of meal. My initial reaction was that the total allocation is a bit on the low side, but looking at the cows and the clean-outs, you’d say they’re working hard, but not underfed. However, Joe is planning to increase the grass allocation up to 10kg/cow/day this week.

The main issue at the moment is grass availability, as average farm cover at 596kg/ha is perilously close to the minimum Joe would like to have of 500kg/ha. Two things are going to save Joe; firstly, not all the cows are calved so demand isn’t as high as it could be and, secondly, he can graze a 4ha field on the recently leased block.

A total of 189 of the 220 cows are calved, which is 86% of the herd. There was 82% calved by St Patrick’s Day, so he’s well short of the 90% target. This will probably be a blessing in disguise this year as his grass demand is lower than it would have been if over 90% was calved in six weeks.

The 22ha of leased land is not yet set up for grazing. Construction of a bridge linking the new block with their existing block is almost complete, but roadways, fencing and reseeding need to be done yet. One of the fields is in stubbles. This is increasing the stocking rate on the grazing block to over four cows/ha in the short term, before dropping back to three cows/ha later in the year. However, the dry weather of the last 10 days means that Joe will be able to graze one or two of the grass fields, without doing too much, if any, damage while getting there.

A 4ha field has a cover of 2,000kg/ha which is 8t of feed. This will add almost 4.5 days to the rotation so the second round will be stretched out to the first week in April.

“The key is to avoid feeding silage if we can, but if we need to we will. We got away without feeding any silage, or even bringing the cows in at night so far this spring. I really just need to buy a bit of time to allow the cover to increase on the fields grazed in the first round. If they grow 30kg or 40kg/ha/day over the next 10 days, we should be OK,” Joe says.

Animal health

The cows were bulling like mad last Monday, with two or three bunches of cows all in heat. Condition score is reasonable. I’d say the average is somewhere between 2.75 and 2.9 – they’re a hard-working herd and it shows. Ten cows are on once-a-day (OAD) milking to protect body condition score. Joe says he probably won’t put the late calving cows on OAD.

Remember, this is Joe’s first spring at home and in charge of the cows and grass. For the last five years, he was working with cows in Saudi Arabia. Mick does the tractor work and looks after the calves.

Herd health has been pretty good, but mortality in the cows has been higher than they’d like. Four cows out of the 220 have been lost (1.8%) for varying reasons.

One was a right-displaced abomasum, one had an ulcer and one died suddenly for unknown reasons while a fourth cow had to be dried off due to mastitis. She was a heifer so Joe says they’ll probably use teat seal on heifers next year.

There have been no cases of milk fever and SCC is a respectable 179,000.

A scour outbreak in a batch of calves caused problems in the calf shed for a period, but after going on yoghurt milk for a while it seems to have rectified itself. While walking through the cows we noticed one cow suffering from bloat, despite the fact that there was little or no clover in the field. Joe drenched her with washing-up liquid and she recovered fine.

Jobs over the next few weeks include the construction of a new silage slab. Up to now, all the silage being made was in bales. A new roadway will be constructed through their existing land and into the new block. This block also needs to be fenced and reseeded. The cows need their booster shot for lepto and more bull calves and a few weanlings need to be sold.

“It’s been a busy few months. March was busier than February and I’m at the stage now we could do with taking a break. Because calving is dragging on we’ll be straight into breeding just as soon as calving is finished,” says Joe.

Because calving is dragging on we’ll be straight into breeding just as soon as calving is finished

The hours are long at the moment and when things go wrong, which they inevitably do when animals are involved, it adds a lot to the workload. Joe starts at 6.30am, but it could be 10am or 10.30am before he’s in for breakfast. Extra help, even for the evening milkings, would lighten the load big time. But Joe isn’t stressed. I think he’s loving the challenges and the buzz from farming at home.

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