Turnout has been a priority on the farm this week, with the continuous good weather allowing more stock to go out to grass.

The remaining maiden heifers were released outdoors to fresh paddocks and vaccinated for clostridial disease.

Farm manager Shaun Diver said: ‘‘Being busy with lambing and calving this week put a hold on bringing the heifers in for weighing. This Monday, I hope to get the opportunity to weigh the heifers, and vaccinating any heifers that I plan to use for breeding for BVD and Leptospirosis.’’

There are now 50 ewes and lambs grazing outdoors on paddocks this week, along with 38 cows and calves.

Grass cover

The grass cover this week is 715kg DM/ha, which has increased by 5kgDM/ha from last week’s grass cover. The average growth rate per day remains strong at 14kg.

“With a high number of stock out to grass over the last few days, it essential that a good grass cover continues. The demand for grass is constantly increasing, with the average demand now at 13kg/DM/day," Shaun comments.

"This weekend, I plan on spreading slurry to the silage ground and I hope to spread more fertiliser to paddocks in the coming weeks when more stock is turned out.’’

Lambing

Lambing is well underway on the farm, with a total of 90 ewes lambed this week. Ewes and lambs are being moved to induvial pens with straw bedding after lambing before being turned out to paddocks.

Shaun said: ‘’Lambing seems to be going well on the farm this week, weather conditions have given us a chance to get more ewes and lambs turned out to grass, leaving more pens in the sheds available for ewes lambing.

We have a few pets lambs this week from a number of triplet ewes lambing - we hope to adopt these lambs onto single-bearing ewes in the next few days.’’

The ewes' feeding rate is the same as last week, with the twin-bearing mature ewes being fed ration at a rate of 850g/day and the triplet-carrying ewes are fed rate of 1,000g/day. Singles continue with no concentrates and are being fed good-quality silage with a DMD of 75%.

Calving

Calving is continuing a bit slower than last week on the farm, with three calves born this week, leaving only 27 cows left to calve.

Shaun comments: ‘’Now that calving has slowed down, we have the opportunity to turnout more cows and calves. This week, we got 23 cows and calves out to paddocks around the shed, leaving a total of 38 cows and calves outdoors.’’

Bulls weighed

The bulls were weighed last week and had an average weight of 540kg. This week, the bulls have to be moved from their high maize bull beef finisher to an ad-lib finisher ration. Shaun hopes to feed an ad-lib finisher ration for approximately 100-120 days in order to finish the bulls. The price of the ad-lib finisher ration for the bulls stands at €340.