Patrick Grennan

Wexford

I started killing my under 16-month-old bulls over the past month. To date, I have seven bulls killed. I drafted them out from my main batch of bulls and fed them more intensively in order to have adequate fat cover on them when they were around 700kg liveweight.

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On average, these bulls have killed out at 402kg carcase weight and their fat covers have ranged between 2= to 4-. Although age limit was not an issue for these bulls, they had very high growth potential, so trying to get them to adequate fat covers while staying within the carcase weight limit proved difficult.

You really have to monitor their liveweight regularly to make sure they do not go over the 420kg carcase limit.

I will have more bulls fit for slaughter in the next two weeks as they are coming close to 16 months.

My bulls have been on approximately 10kg of a high-energy finishing ration with baled silage since early March. My stock bull is with the cows since 20 April.

I am running two Limousin stock bulls. A Mas du Clo bull is for mature cows and an On-Dit bull is to breed replacements and to use on heifers.

I selected replacement heifers in February, based on liveweight (400kg+), milk yield of their dam and docility. All cows and calves are grazing on my home farm.

With excellent growth rates and good ground conditions, I am able to run a high stocking rate of 4,058kg liveweight/ha (6.15LU/ha) with livestock demand running at 81kg DM/ha/day.

Average farm cover is 708kg DM/ha. Currently, I have nine days of grass ahead of the cows and calves and I am grazing them in two-day temporary paddocks using wire reels and movable plastic stakes.

This allows me to protect the plant re-growth. All grassland received 40 units of urea in early March and I spread a bag of 27:2.5:5 per acre after each grazing.