Last week, the BETTER Farm NI programme hosted an open day on Alastair McNeilly’s farm at Muckamore, Co Antrim. The event was used to outline how the changes taking place on farm are improving the its overall profitability.

With a sizeable poultry unit on the farm and only one full-time labour unit, it is important that the system is kept simple.

The 145-acre farm carries a spring-calving herd of Limousin- and Angus-cross cows calving from March to May. All male progeny are taken through to slaughter as steers.

The best female progeny are now retained for breeding as the herd builds cow numbers towards 90 to 95 females.

Surplus heifers that are not required for breeding are then taken through to slaughter, as well as cull cows.

Calving pattern

One of the biggest changes made to the system has been the move to compact calving. In 2017, just short of 70 cows calved in a 19-week period from early March to July.

However, on closer analysis of the calving pattern, 73% of cows calved inside a six-week window, meaning it was only a small number of late-calving cows causing the pattern to run late into the summer.

For a finishing enterprise, having a prolonged calving pattern is far from ideal, as too many cattle are below target housing weight during the second winter and they require a longer indoor finishing period.

By moving to a more compact calving pattern, Alastair will be able to group steers and heifers in larger groups, easing management at grass and during the intensive finishing period.

It also means larger groups of cattle can be marketed at the same time, allowing him to negotiate on price.

Tightening the calving pattern

This spring, 85 cows were scanned to calve into the herd with the first calf born on 23 March. As of last week, 72 cows and calves were on the ground, along with four cows that lost calves. This equates to 89% of the herd having calved in a six-week period.

Alastair is on track to have all cows calved before the end of May, which will bring the calving pattern back to 10 to 12 weeks.

Reducing the calving pattern by so much in one year can lead to higher numbers of empty cows at the end of the breeding season.

In Alastair’s case, he anticipated later-calving cows possibly slipping out of the herd. Therefore, additional heifers were put to the bull as a precaution.

Rather than remove the stock bull on a set date, bulls were allowed to run with cows until September, with cows scanned on 28 September.

Only cows that were served before 24 August were retained. From 65 cows put to the bull, 58 were scanned in-calf along with 27 heifers last autumn.

Homebred replacements

Undoubtedly the biggest change on farm has been the move to rearing replacement heifers from within the herd.

Prior to this, replacements were purchased annually as maiden heifers and calved into the herd around 36 months of age.

However, buying in heifers for breeding was becoming too expensive, with animals bought in 2017 costing over £1,100. In addition, not all heifers would go in-calf or failed to go back in-calf after calving.

Breeding from within the herd was seen as a much better option in terms of herd health. To be cost-efficient, heifers would also need to calve down at 24 months of age, which was another change for Alastair.

Given the value of cull cows compared with the value of beef heifers, it made financial sense to bring more heifers into the herd for breeding.

This spring saw the first group of homebred 24-month-old heifers calving on-farm. These animals calved to a new Angus stock bull purchased in 2017.

The Angus bull has good EBVs for calving ease, growth, carcase and maternal traits. To date, his calves were born with little difficulty for heifers.

Heifer management

When calving heifers at 24 months of age, a crucial period for herd management is getting sufficient weight gain during the animal’s first winter.

After the poor grazing conditions last autumn, fodder shortages and a late turnout in 2018, there was a risk that heifers would be too light to put to the bull this year.

By weighing cattle regularly, Alastair was able to track cattle performance over the winter period and heifers are on track to reach their minimum target breeding weight of 400kg by June.

Heifers weighed 348kg on 20 April as they went to grass and 25 heifers were vaccinated for BVD at this point.

Heifers will be weighed again towards the end of May and any animal not deemed suitable for breeding will be removed from the group.

To ensure heifers would meet their target breeding weight, they were wintered on good-quality silage bales made from surplus grazing. Silage was analysed with a D-value of 71.

Heifers were also fed 2kg/day of concentrate from housing until February, when meal levels were cut to 1kg/day.

In previous years, meal would have been removed from the heifers around one month prior to the planned turnout date.

But, this year, Alastair continued feeding meal right up to turnout and it has proved to be a good decision.

Breeding change

The herd ran two Angus and one Limousin stock bulls last year and all three bulls are still on farm. As Alastair aims to get 85 live calves weaned annually, he realistically needs to put 95 cows to the bull.

This will allow for the small number of cows not going in-calf, as well as cows that either lose their calf by aborting or at calving time.

Having just three bulls to cover 95 cows will be demanding on herd sires. Therefore, to ease the pressure on stock bulls, Alastair is planning to use AI during the first three weeks of the breeding period on a group of 30 cows.

These animals will be grazed beside the farmyard and can be easily brought into the handling unit for insemination thanks to good grazing infrastructure.

Using AI will also provide Alastair with the opportunity to use a different breed of sire on cows in an effort to increase hybrid vigour, as well as bring proven maternal genetics into the herd.

Simmental or Shorthorn sires are being considered to increase milk in cows. Sires will be selected based on EBV data for maternal, terminal and ease of calving traits.