We started to kill our Angus steers as they were coming fit for slaughter in November. A group of 10 cattle were slaughtered with an average carcase weight of 372kg.

There are still 25 steers to kill and they will be drafted over January and February as they come fit for slaughter.

I am pleased with the performance of the steers killed to date. Carcase weights have improved on last year when the first steers were killed at as similar age and an average carcase weight of 349kg as outline in Table 1.

The steers were evenly split between U and R grades for conformation with the majority of cattle killing out at fat class 4=.

The steers killed so far were born from 18 April to early May 2015, making them just over 18 months of age at slaughter.

This means the cattle had an average daily carcase gain of 0.66kg/day, which again is an improvement on previous years.

I killed three steers back in September at just over 16 months of age. These animals averaged 382kg when slaughtered and gained an average of 0.75kg/day in carcase weight.

The steers killed to date are mostly bred from my Angus stock bull Netherton Archie who is in the top 1% of the breed for liveweight gain.

Going by the slaughter weight and age of his calves, he is definitely delivering as his performance figures indicate.

The same bull is also in the top 5% of the breed for milk traits which is a bonus as we are keeping some heifers as replacements to build cow numbers to 100.

Feed costs

Due to the difficult grazing conditions last year, these animals did not go to grass in 2016. Instead, they remained in the shed and were fed high-quality silage on an ad-lib basis and 3kg/day of home grown rolled barley.

We did some finishing budgets for these cattle comparing the cost of the indoor diet to the grazing diet.

I have a weigh bridge on farm and regularly monitored the performance of these cattle to make sure they were covering there feed costs. The steers were typically gaining 1.15kg/day while indoors from spring until slaughter.

Taking silage at £25/t, feed costs for forage was 75p/kg with 3kg rolled barley at £130/t costing 39p/kg.

Taking an Angus scheme beef price of £3.90/kg, at an average of 0.68kg of carcase gain for all steers, the cattle were generating a daily income of £2.68/day.

This leaves a margin over feed costs of £1.54/day to cover labour, overheads and veterinary costs.

Silage

Silage quality is crucial to making this system work. Without high-quality silage, liveweight gains and, more importantly, carcase gains would not be covering feed costs.

I have my own silage-making equipment, which allows me to harvest grass when it is at the ideal stage for cutting and when weather permits.

First-cut silage was harvested on 20 May with second-cut silage harvest on 17 July. Analysis for both forages is outlined in Table 2.

The 2016 spring-born calves were weaned in early to mid-December. This year, we weaned 52 bull calves and 36 heifer calves with weaning taking place indoors.

My herd is predominantly April- and May-calving, so calves are a bit on the young side to be weaning in late September ahead of the housing period.

Like the other farms in the programme, we take steps ahead of weaning to reduce stress levels and ensure calves are in optimum health.

Calves were wormed with a pour-on in mid-September which was their second worm drench of the year.

At the same time, I gave calves their second shot of pneumonia vaccine. Calves are also vaccinated for IBR on this farm.

We use faecal samples to monitor worm burdens in weanlings, once housed, to see if a third dose is required.

Vaccinating cattle is money well spent in my opinion to reduce the risk of a pneumonia outbreak once housed.

Weaning performance

This year’s bull calves weighed, on average, 305kg liveweight at weaning time. This gives them a daily gain of 1.38kg/day from birth to weaning.

When correcting weaning weight to a standard 200-day weight for all male calves, weaning weight is increased to 317kg liveweight.

Based on weaning weight and age, cattle need to average a daily weight gain of 1.02kg/day from now until 1 December 2017 if they are to reach a target liveweight of 680kg by slaughter time.

For heifers, they averaged 292kg liveweight at weaning, which is increased to 297kg when correcting all calves to 200 days of age.

Daily liveweight gain from birth for the heifer calves was 1.31kg/day. Heifers had an average date of birth on 11 May, while bull calves had an average date of birth on 20 May, so cows and calves performed well at grass this year.

Over the course of the programme, I have been focused on reducing cow size and increase cow efficiency.

By weighing calves regularly every year, I have been using the weaning weight to make breeding decisions and culling decisions.

I have found that big cows do not produce the biggest calves when you use a standard weaning age, which for this farm is 200 days of age or seven months old.

Using calf weaning weight as a percentage of mature cow weight gives me a good indication of the more efficient cows in the herd.

Smaller cows eat less and can be stocked tighter at grass and indoors in winter. As they wean similar weights to heavier cows, this makes them much more efficient as they produce the same output at a lower cost.

The cows with bull calves weighed 675kg liveweight and weaned approximately 47% of their body weight. The cows with heifer calves weighed 650kg and weaned 46% of their body weight.

Cow efficiency

There were 11 cows weighing from 540kg to 594kg weaning bull calves at an average 303kg liveweight. For this group, the cows weaned 54% of their liveweight.

Compare this to four cows weighing 804kg to 868kg liveweight weaning bull calves at an average 305kg liveweight. This worked out at 37% of cow bodyweight being weaned.

There were 18 cows weighing between 700kg and 800kg liveweight with calves weighing 320kg at weaning. This worked out at 44% of cow body weight being weaned.

Weighing cattle and using the data certainly focuses the management on this farm. Cow weight is reducing year on year as more Angus and Stabiliser cows enter the herd compared to the continental breeds used in the past.