Since the Ploughing, our calves have settled in nicely to their home on Pat Harrison’s farm in Brideswell in Co Roscommon. The calves have been weighed several times over the course of the last six months and have been thriving.

Since they arrived home, they have been fed on 2kg a day of Grennan high-energy 16% beef nut and silage. Due to the calves’ weight on the current feed regime and mild weather, we decided to out-winter them. They have recently been dosed for liver fluke. They seem very content and we are happy with the progress they have made thus far.

Our theme in the competition is animal welfare and farm safety. We have researched the main aspects of what we can do to improve the lives of our five calves. The simple biosecurity measures we have put in place have ensured our calves have remained healthy and disease-free to date.

Absolutely brilliant

The competition is run by the Certified Irish Angus Producer Group, ABP Food Group and Kepak Group. From the very start of this project in transition year up until now, it has been absolutely brilliant for us.

We have come together as a group and thanks to the competition, we have experienced many different opportunities. At the National Ploughing Championships in 2016 we spoke to hundreds of people about the competition. We toured factories such as ABP in Bandon, Co Cork. Our most recent trip was to Amsterdam, which you can read about in our next blog post.

Getting in contact with the right people has been difficult at times but being aware and linked in with the topics of animal welfare and farm safety has given us the advantage of knowing where to look. For example, we have made contact with Bernadette Earley from Teagasc regarding the effects age can have on castration.

Weight progress

We weighed the calves in September just after the Ploughing and the average was 231kg. We weighed them again in November, about seven weeks later, and the average had increased to 272kg.

We used these weights to calculate the calves’ daily weight gain at around 1kg. In the new year we weighed the calves again – they are now all over 300kg and their average daily weight gain has been 0.99kg.

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All Angus calves 16 blogs