Michael Smith

Co Cavan

The second-cut silage finished up last week with 60 bales made from 10 acres. I made a small second-cut as the first-cut gave excellent yields and I had been making bales from surplus grass over the summer.

Fodder stocks are more than adequate. I budget for a five-month winter from November and, with some good dry ground close by the yard, I can keep weanlings out late or get out reasonably early in March.

There should still be a good buffer of silage in reserve but hopefully it will not be needed.

My autumn herd has 18 cows and they started calving three weeks ago. To date, there are 12 cows calved and the remaining six are all due to calve within the next fortnight.

In the past, I had some trouble with pneumonia in the autumn calves. This year, I am being proactive and vaccinating the calves from three weeks old using an intra-nasal vaccine.

All being well, the calves will be out at grass until 1 November, which will give plenty of time for immunity to build up.

The spring calves were also vaccinated for pneumonia this year. I think it was worthwhile as the disease gave calves a serious setback in previous years. Spring calves are also due to be wormed again.

The strongest spring bull weanlings will be sold this autumn and creep feeding will start on 1 September. The later-born bull calves and heifer calves will be carried over the winter and grazed again next year to sell as strong stores. This worked very well this year.

I sold the stores recently from 480kg to 515kg liveweight at €2.30/kg.

The spring cows were scanned and 31 out of 33 are in-calf in a nine-week breeding season. One cow is barren and the other cow is showing in-calf but is a problem cow and will most likely be culled.