Yesterday a pal asked me how our heifers were doing at grass. I hung my head and muttered under my breath:

“They’re still in…”

It poignantly portrays the plight of the part-time suckler farm.

ADVERTISEMENT

As is the case with most of these types of enterprises, Saturday is when big jobs like this are done. Alas, the first round of the club football championship fell on the Saturday gone-by.

The one before that came after a week of atrocious weather in these parts. It isn’t just a case of opening the shed gates either. The animals need to be injected going out.

Some years ago an outbreak of leptospirosis took hold here. The ugly result: three aborted calves.

To this day a definite cause eludes us. Our vet floated the notion that our closed herd status could have worked negatively. With no outbreak in recent memory, there would have been zero immunity present when our animals were exposed to the disease. Thus, they could not deal with the burden.

What do they say about every cloud? Keeping the heifers indoors is allowing us to get rid of some of our surplus silage bales that cold clog the yard when 2015’s first cut comes in. Their diet has been 100% silage for the last three weeks.

Feed for bull finishing

Maize meal has been introduced into our bull-finishing ration, with a view towards building to 50% inclusion. Rolled barley (25%) and a barley-based beef fattening mixture (25%) containing maize gluten feed and soya hulls will make up the remainder.

Including silage, the ration costs €2.21 head-1 daily (rolled barley €170, maize €205, fattener €225). Last year, our average carcass weight was 378 kg. Killing out at 57%, these bulls had a final live weight of 663 kg; growing c.610 kg since birth.

Their average age at slaughter last year was 459 days (15.1 months). So, lifetime daily gain was in the region of 1.33 kg from birth to slaughter. Though it has been shown that rates of carcass gain accelerate during finishing, here let’s assume that from birth to slaughter the animal is gaining 0.76 kg of carcass daily (57% of 1.33 kg).

I envisage a very-worst case scenario of around €4.30 per kg (inc. QAS) when all is said and done.

So, theoretically these bulls are depositing at least €3.27 worth of carcass daily.

Sounds simple doesn’t it?