“Let’s keep suckling simple” was the message delivered to the large crowd of over 700 farmers attending Wednesday’s BETTER Farm open day.

Host farmer Chris McCarthy runs 55 spring-calving suckler cows on a 28ha grassland farm at Crookedwood, near Mullingar.

Since joining the Teagasc/Irish Farmers Journal BETTER farm programme in 2012, he has been focused on simplifying his suckler-to-weanling system to suit his off-farm employment.

Moving calving forward to start in January and finish by the end of March is one of the main objectives of the system to produce heavier weanlings off grass for sale in November.

Tight calving is essential as time is limited.

All routine tasks have to be completed on the same day, ie de-horning and dosing, which is not possible when the calving period is spread out over six months or more.

Increased weight gain from grass has resulted in the farm producing heavier weanlings, leading to higher output per cow unit.

Stocking rate has also increased from 1.91LU/ha in 2011 to 2.2LU/ha in 2014.

Gross margin has increased from €649/ha in 2011 before joining the programme to a projected €860/ha in 2014, which is a 32% increase.