Chris McCarthy

Co Westmeath

Rainfall early in the week was very welcome here in Crookedwood. Grass growth this week is 56kg DM/ha and grass is growing well at this stage in the grazing season.

I am currently spreading one bag of CAN fertilizer per acre after each grazing to lengthen my rotation. I cut my second-cut silage two weeks ago. I was very happy with the high yield and I am confident that I will have plenty of fodder to last the winter.

I intend to keep grass in the diet for as long as possible this autumn and as such will continue to try to lengthen the grazing rotation while grass growth is strong.

The spring-born calves are grazing good-quality grass and thriving well. They are creep grazing under the wire in front of the cows.

I plan to weigh them again in the first week of September. I will use this to also give them their second worm dose. They were last weighed on 10 July and the bulls were gaining 1.28kg/day from birth and heifers were achieving 1.12kg/day from birth. I intend to wean these calves from the middle of September.

I scanned the cows on 30 July, which was 40 days after removing the bulls. Out of 54 cows, 50 proved in-calf. I was very pleased with the scan.

One of the four cows that proved empty had been repeating all year so I was not expecting her to be in-calf. Three of the other cows that scanned empty were identified as having a follicular cyst.

If I had carried out a mid-season scan, these three cows may have been identified then. It is definitely something I will consider doing next year. There are three other cows that were not presented for breeding and will be culled this year due to old age and poor performance.