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Padraig O’Connor is Roscommon’s BETTER farm representative. His 52ha farm is split in three blocks near the small village of Knockcroghery.
Currently calving 52 suckler cows in the springtime – Padraig will look to increase this to 60 during his time in the BETTER farm beef programme.
His cow type is predominantly a first- or second cross Angus from the dairy herd. In recent years, he has brought more beef into his cow herd via Limousin, Charolais and Saler genetics.
Padraig’s average cow weight in mid-lactation 2017 was 627kg. But, there is a massive range around this figure.
Amazingly, his lightest cow, a 13-year-old Angus-Holstein cross which was 442kg in mid-July, has given Padraig 11 calves
At €143, she is in the top 1% of suckler cows in Ireland from a replacement index point of view. Her 2017 heifer calf was born on 5 March, out of a Charolais stock bull.
She achieved a daily weight gain of 1.44kg to mid-July (226kg).
At the other end of the scale, Padriag’s heaviest cow is almost twice the weight of the light cow at 842kg.
She is a seven-year-old Angus-Holstein cross who is currently rearing her fifth calf – a Charolais bull by the same sire.
She holds just one star on the replacement index. Her bull calf was born on 28 February and weighed 207kg in mid-July. This translated into a daily weight gain of 1.2kg.
The new international barometer for suckler cow efficiency is 200-day weaning ratio – how much of the cow’s own weight she has produced at 200 days.
If things continue, Padraig’s small five-star cow will wean a 328kg calf – a whopping 74% of her mid-season body weight. The heavy one-star cow will wean 286kg – 34% of her own body weight.
If both cows eat 2% of their liveweight each day, the heavy cow will eat 1.6t of extra grass dry matter during this 200-day period.
In grass alone, the heavier cow will cost Padraig over €110 to maintain between calving and weaning.
Her financials will further suffer at weaning if her calf maintains current growth rates and tips the scales 40kg lighter than the light cow’s calf. A final weaning weight will complete the story.
This is not a call to rid our herds of big cows – merely an example of how being efficient can leave more in our pockets
Suckler cow weight is just one the areas we can improve on. Padraig’s scenario merely shows the variation that exists between cows, which wouldn’t necessarily be picked up on if he wasn’t weighing.
For me, if the ground can take a heavy cow and she is weaning close to half her body weight, along with ticking fertility and docility boxes, she can stay put.
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