Barry Carty

Garrison, Co Fermanagh

Silage ground is closed off and greening up well. I applied half bag of urea per acre at the end of March and three bags per acre of 22-4-14 + sulpur in early April. The silage ground also got slurry, with a maximum application rate of 2,000 gallons per acre.

I’ve been making the most of the good weather by topping a lot of the rougher grazing areas. These areas are wet, and you need to control the rushes when conditions allow.

Autumn cows are weaned and will be heading to these areas soon.

However, I am still using AI in my winter calving cows before turnout. This is coming to an end after eight weeks of breeding.

Young stock are going out to grass this week one they get the booster clostridial vaccination.

CAFRE

Greenmount beef and sheep centre, Muckamore

From 95 cows scanned in-calf, we now have 20 left to calve. So far there have been five sets of twins which make up for the occasional loss. The main jobs outside of calving are getting cattle out to grass and fertiliser applications.

Fertiliser will be applied on a block basis every three weeks and protected urea will be used on the grazing platform. All silage ground has been closed off for cutting around mid-May.

All first-calved heifers are at grass along with young stock. Mature cows and calves are being turned out to join them as grass growth increases.

Jonathan Blair

Ballykelly, Co Derry

All young stock are now at grass, along with 60 cows and calves. There are still five cows to calve. They are still housed along with some cows with younger calves.

Bulls should be coming fit for slaughter from mid-May onwards. They are sitting around 570kg based on recent weight gains. They were moved on to ad-lib feeding last week.

I applied lime to some of the grazing areas (2t/acre) over the past week, on a day after we had some rain showers.

I divided my fertiliser applications on silage ground, with my final dressing going on this week. Harvesting is planned for mid- to late-May.

Grass growth is starting to rise on farm, with 50kg/DM/ha recorded last week on grazing ground.