Grazing conditions remain challenging on the programme farms after heavy rainfall earlier this week. To help keep cattle settled and avoid excessive poaching, cattle are grazing on shorter 24- to 48-hour allocations.

Leaving cattle for longer periods before moving to fresh grass will only serve to make cattle more unsettled due to grass being spoiled.

This increases the risk of cattle poaching swards, which can limit grass growth later in the season.

Alternatively, some of the farmers have spread cattle out over a larger grazing area. With smaller livestock groups on a bigger land area, the risk of poaching is reduced.

However, as ground conditions improve over the coming weeks, the plan will be to tighten cattle into larger groups on a proper rotation to ease management and help build grass covers ahead of stock.

Low growth

In addition to difficult ground conditions, grass growth is still considerably lower than normal for the time of year.

Where fertiliser has been applied in recent weeks, there has been a good response on younger swards with higher levels of ryegrass present.

Older swards have been slower to respond to nitrogen. Fertiliser will continue to be applied as necessary in the coming weeks.

With higher numbers of freshly calved cows grazing on lush grass and changeable weather patterns, there is an increased risk of grass tetany to be aware of.

Cows are being supplemented with additional magnesium through lick buckets with other farmers giving cattle a mineral bolus before the grazing season.

Dates for the diary

Spring calving completed in a 10-week period

Spring calving is finished for this year, with 82 cows and heifers originally scanned to calve. We had a few losses due to issues such as a calf with a broken leg, a cow lying on a calf and the occasional difficult calving because of mal-presentation.

In total, we have 74 cows with live calves on the ground and I bought in two cows with calves at foot, which brings the spring herd to 76 cows and calves.

Calving started on 12 February and the last calf was born on 28 April. Having such a compact calving period is definitely the way forward for the herd, as it is much easier to group cattle for management purposes.

It will also benefit my bull finishing system having more cattle of a similar age being intensively fed for slaughter.

Difficult weather meant that cows and calves remained housed after calving for longer than I would have liked.

Thankfully, cows have been returning to grass over the past week. All cows, with the exception of five spring-calving cows, are now at grass. They will be turned out at the end of the week, once the weather settles again.

Scour

These cows were kept indoors, as their calves suffered from an outbreak of cryptosporidium.

The last 10 cows to calve were the only animals to have problems with crypto and all calves were treated with Halocur. Seven of the calves have recovered, but, unfortunately, three calves were lost.

Grazing

Ground conditions are still borderline for grazing and, as such, I have cattle spread over a bigger area at present to try to keep them settled.

Some cows are being set-stocked, while others are being rotated daily, or every second day, to avoid poaching.

As ground conditions improve, cows will be tightened up into a proper rotation. Grass growth has been limited, even with early nitrogen being applied.

Hopefully, grass growth picks up in the next week to build covers and help to keep animals settled.

Silage

Silage ground is now closed up for first cut. I closed off 70 acres, which is 10 acres more than I harvested for first-cut silage last year.

Silage ground got 3,000 gallons/acre of slurry and just over 70 units/acre of nitrogen. After first-cut is harvested, I am planning to close up 50 acres for second cut and possibly take a small third cut along with taking out surplus bales of silage from the grazing platform.

There is also 14 acres of grassland to be reseeded. It was ploughed last autumn, but wet weather meant it was not sowed out. It has just been sprayed and is ready to sow. This land will provide additional grazing or silage if necessary.

Planning ahead for the breeding period

The late turnout of cattle is far from ideal, as I am planning to start the breeding season in mid-May, so it does not give cows much time to settle on to a grass diet before going to the bull.

Along with the 76 spring-calving cows, I have 19 cows that calved last autumn. They have been held over on purpose, as I am moving to a 100% spring-calving herd.

This means I have 95 cows to go to the bull this year. Cows will be served with one Limousin and two Simmental stock bulls, with 24 maiden heifers being covered by an Angus stock bull.

The Angus bull was purchased in 2017 and his first calves were born this spring. He has proved to be easy calving and calf quality is very pleasing. Last year, I synchronised replacement of the heifers and served them to AI sires. It worked well, but it is expensive. This year, I am just going to run the heifers with the bull only.

The heifers have been weighed and the 20 strongest animals averaged 390kg, with the other four averaging 370kg.

Breeding will last for 10 weeks to keep the calving pattern tight. Any cow or heifer that is not in calf will be fattened.

Slaughter cattle

The 2017 spring-born bulls are now coming fit for slaughter. I killed two bulls last week which were just over 14 months of age. They had carcase weights of 427kg and 390kg respectively. I still have 32 bulls to kill and they will be drafted for slaughter over the next six weeks.

Alongside these bulls is a group of 12 heifers which should also be ready for slaughter inside the next six weeks.

The heifers are on 4kg/day of a finishing ration, with the bulls on ad-lib concentrates.