BETTER Farm programme participant Tom Halpin operates a suckler calf to store beef enterprise and an early lambing ewe enterprise on his farm near Carlanstown, Co Meath.

Since joining the programme, Tom has increased his cow numbers from 80 to 92, which are split with 52 spring cows calving mid-February to April. The remaining 40 cows calve over June and July.

Spring-born calves are sold as weanlings at around eight months of age. However, this year, he decided to keep the heifer weanlings and sell them off grass at 16 months of age. Summer-born calves are sold the following year at 12 months of age.

Tom operates a closed herd (except for breeding bulls) and cows are predominately Simmental crossed with Charolais. They are bred to either a Charolais stock bull with good terminal traits, or a Limousin stock bull bred by Ronick Hawk with proven maternal traits for replacements.

Grazing challenge

At the beginning of the programme, Tom farmed his own 64ha of land alongside an additional 22ha of rented land on a short term basis.

Rented land was used for silage and grazing sheep. However, Tom lost the use of the rented land in 2013 and, therefore, his 64ha land block had to provide all of his winter feed (grass silage) and grazing for his livestock.

With the increased suckler herd, and with no silage reserves carried over due to a prolonged winter, Tom had to try to grow as much grass as possible to provide for the winter feeding period.

The delayed spring growth affected the grazing rotation and delayed closing up of silage ground, which was closed on 20 May.

As an experiment, 12kg/acre of hybrid grass seeds were stitched into the existing sward to help boost grass yields on half of the existing sward using an Aitchison seed drill.

Silage harvesting

Silage was not harvested until 5 July. As a result, the second cut silage was not harvested until 5 September.

Overall, two cuts totalling 71 acres were taken and silage quality was relatively good, given the delayed harvest date, at 69 DMD (0.77 UFL) for both cuts.

Tom also had the opportunity to make 12 acres of hay (yielding 150 4x4 bales) during the summer when grass growth and weather allowed. A total of 160 bales of straw were purchased during the harvest to provide feeding and bedding.

In all, 2013 was a difficult year to manage grass as the slow start and two periods of drought in July and September kept Tom on the back foot throughout the year.

With assistance from his local Teagasc B&T adviser Ned Heffernan, Tom completed a winter forage budget before the housing period to calculate if enough fodder was on the farm to meet the winter feed demand of his cattle.

Fodder budget

The budget indicated a requirement of approximately 800 tonnes of silage over a five-month winter. Fodder stocks were very tight as there was approximately 600 tonnes of silage ensiled, plus 160 round bales of hay.

Early action was taken to stretch silage by supplementing the summer calving cows with 1kg/day of concentrates when housed and to restrict the silage levels being fed to spring cows.

In late December, another fodder budget was completed on Tom’s farm to reassess silage supplies. It was estimated that Tom was using approximately 4.4 tonnes of silage daily and had approximately 300 tonnes of forage left in the pit (50% of harvested silage). At the current rate of use, this should supply enough silage until early March. Therefore, Tom purchased additional forage to last until mid-April.

Body condition

The feed requirement of a suckler cow varies throughout the year, depending on the stage of production, such as mating/breeding, calving and weaning as outlined in Table 1.

Therefore, the basis of suckler cow nutrition is about manipulating the cow’s body condition score (BCS). Building up body reserves during the grazing season when grass is plentiful and mobilising these body reserves (fat) during the winter reduces feed demand and costs.

Tom weaned his spring calving cows in October and, with good grass supplies in the autumn, cows were in good body condition at housing with the general BCS range from 3.0 to 3.25 (where 0 = thin and 5 = fat).

When cows were housed in early November, a diet was drawn up for his cows with help from his advisers based on the energy requirements (UFL/day) from Table 2.

Feed requirements during late pregnancy are for the maintenance of the cow, foetal growth of the calf and, in the case of a first calving heifer, there is an allowance for the animal’s growth.

The calf gains between 75% and 80% of its total birth weight during the final three months of pregnancy.

Feed requirement

Tom’s cows weigh approximately 650kg liveweight and, therefore, they need to consume 5.8 UFL/day for maintenance alone.

Due to the increased development of the calf in the final stages of pregnancy, the maintenance increases with every month of gestation, as highlighted in Table 1.

However, because they entered the housing period with a BCS of 3 to 3.25, there is scope to restrict their feed energy intake so that they should be calving down close to the target BCS of 2.5.

It was decided to restrict Tom’s cows to 30kg (fresh weight) of grass silage (24% DM) and 2kg of straw. Cows were supplemented with a pre-calving mineral/vitamin mix. In total, the cows were offered 8.96kg of feed on a DM basis.

Energy is measured in units called UFL where 1UFL is equivalent to 1kg of air-dried, rolled barley and the energy content of all other feedstuffs are relative to this.

For this diet (on an energy basis), the cows are consuming 7.2kg DM of 0.77 UFL silage, which equals 5.54 UFL and 1.76kg of straw of 0.44 UFL, which equals 0.77 UFL.

Therefore, the cows were supplied with a total dietary energy intake of 6.3 UFL/day. Table 3 shows the degree to which Tom’s spring calving cows are being restricted on an energy basis during the course of pregnancy.

In total, these cows will be subjected to a total loss of 135 UFL from housing to calving in March.

This is equivalent to approximately 175kg DM of silage, or 730kg of silage on a fresh-weight basis.

By costing grass silage at €30/tonne, this represents a feed cost saving of approximately €22 per spring calving cow.

Across the 52 spring calving cows, the total saving from restricting the silage fed amounts to €1,804.

A loss of one unit in BCS contributes about 280 UFL. Therefore, a 135 UFL loss should give rise to a loss of 0.5 of a condition score, which will bring the cows back to 2.75 to 2.25 at calving.

Despite the feed and cost savings demonstrated by restricting silage to cows in good body condition, it is vital that producers get cows onto a high plane of nutrition before the breeding season in order to maintain a compact calving period and a 365 days calving interval.