It’s been a busy week here and it’s all down to the weather. Grass has started to grow well and we needed to get cattle out to keep on top of it.

We normally try and group the heifers according to weight as they go to grazing. That makes it easier for gathering later in the summer as we can just bring in the heaviest ones first as we pick them off for slaughter.

All cattle just received 4ml of copper + vitamin b12 into the neck - it is very important that this injection is given in the neck and as deep as you can so as not to cause an abscess and hence devalue the meat.

The last few heifers were slaughtered out of the shed and we were very happy with them. They were bought last May at €2.15/kglw and sold the last 3 three weeks for €4.25 & €4.30/kgdw. They received grass only until housing in Dec, silage only until Feb and roughly 100kg of meal each since.

Some heifers were bought on Thursday in Blessington at €2.50/kglw so it will be interesting to see how they fare next winter. In general the trade today was excellent for anyone selling. Smaller cattle were dearest of all I felt.

Lambing

A handful of January born lambs were slaughtered this week. It’s always great to see them come fit for sale but at the same time they get a very short run at life - they killed out very well.

We are down to the last 13 ewes to lamb.

We rehoused them on Saturday evening due to the bad forecast and lucky we did as three lambed during the night and with the amount of rain that fell here I don’t think they would have survived.

The February born lambs are all powering ahead. In fairness they and their mothers have had grass in front of them at all times.

A small bit of silage ground was fertilised this week, 50 kg of 10-7-25 + s and 100kg of 33% sulpha can were applied per acre. We don’t lock up a lot of ground for silage early as we find when lambs start to be sold and ewes weaned we always end up taking out fields for silage/hay then.

The "shackles" are off dairying

On another note, while I wish all those who converted to dairying the best of luck and hope it proves successful for all, both farmers and industry, I attended a meeting last week were it was brought up about “the shackles are off now” re dairying. As if that’s all anybody wants to hear about.

Well it brought out an interesting response from around the room, as it turns out many people there were fed up of hearing about these “shackles” and that not everyone wants to be a dairy farmer or read about dairying 24/7.

I’m going out now to count me few poor sheep, again!