Weight for age: How well are your cattle performing this year? There is only one way to know for sure and that is to weigh them. Waiting until cattle leave the farm for the factory or mart to get the first weight of a beef animal is not a good way to make progress in a herd. While it is easy to say cattle are thriving, are they doing 0.8kg/day or 1.1kg/day? There is no way to tell by a visual assessment, yet over a 200-day grazing season, there will be 60kg of difference in liveweight by autumn. At €2.20/kg liveweight, there will be a difference of €132 per head, which is money no herd owner can afford to go without. Knowing the performance of cattle now gives you time to make changes to improve performance. You can easily gauge if these animals are on target as regards weight for age. As a rule of thumb, steers should be gaining around 1kg/day. Assuming a birth weight of 45kg to 50kg for a bull calf, a 15-month-old steer should weigh approximately 490kg. Target a daily gain of 0.9kg/day for heifers. A 15-month-old heifer should weigh approximately 450kg liveweight, assuming a birth weight of 40kg. Beef producers are paid on weight, so it is important to maximise weight gain as cheaply as possible from grass to stand any chance of generating a profit.

Worms: Store cattle, replacement heifers, autumn calves and early-born spring calves will be picking up gut worms with every grazing. Dairy bred bulls are also very susceptible to worms, so they should be a priority for dosing now. If susceptible cattle have not already received their first dose, you should be planning to administer the first drench shortly. Wait until at least 50% of the group are showing signs of worm trouble before giving the first dose. The reason for the delay is that going too early with the first dose before the animals have picked up a heavy enough worm burden may result in an ineffective treatment. Young stock grazing on relatively lush grass that has been recently fertilized will have loose dung that can be mistaken for a worm problem. If in doubt, take a dung sample for faecal egg counting to determine when a dose is required. Do not dose and move to clean pasture straight away as the cattle will be shedding worms after treatment. Once dosed, it is better to return the calf to the paddock where they were grazing and hold on this ground for two to three days. This way the calf is shedding the worms on a “contaminated” paddock, rather than spreading the worms onto a clean paddock.

Kale: If you are thinking of sowing a catch crop such as kale to reduce the winter feed demand, then June is the ideal time to get the crop planted. Planting any later than June will result in a poorly yielding crop. Choose a dry field with plenty of shelter and one that has access to a run-back area. If drilling the seed, sow 2.5kg/acre or 3kg/acre if broadcasting the seed. At soil index 3, for maximum yield, apply up to 100 units of nitrogen, 40 units of P and 140 units of K split between sowing and after crop emergence.

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Date for DiAry: Grange is hosting the BEEF 2014 event on 18 June. A full overview of the event will be featured next week.