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Our March-born calves were weaned on 18 November, with 16 bulls and 15 heifers removed from the cows. Weaning was reasonably straightforward, as cows and calves were housed on 22 September.
Calves were allowed to creep outside to a dry paddock beside the shed as they liked.
Calves were weaned simply by splitting them into bulls and heifers and moved to a different shed.
Dry cows are on second-cut silage which has a feed value of 26.3% dry matter, 10.8 ME (energy), 12.5% protein and 67 D-value. Cows are in good body condition, so silage is being restricted.
I don’t work with a diet feeder, so to restrict silage allocation I am simply offering cows three grabs of silage daily instead the usual four and it is working well.
There is still a group of 30 later-calving cows with calves at foot and the plan is to wean these calves at the weekend. In future, as the calving pattern tightens, we want to get calves weaned much earlier in the autumn.
We also need to improve daily liveweight gain in calves to achieve this. At present, calf performance is not good enough with an average 1.06kg/day over the year.
Changing breeding policy
To address this issue, I am looking at using a different breed of herd sire next year. My cows are basically purebred Limousin, so we have been losing out on the benefits of hybrid vigour.
Hopefully, more crossbreeding with a second breed will improve the milking production in cows.
Our grazing management is good, so if we can bring more milk into the herd, we will see calf performance improve.
At the minute, we are considering whether to opt for an Angus or Simmental stock bull. There are pros and cons to both, but I hope to have a new bull purchased in early spring.
Bulls
The March-born bulls were weighed on Saturday 16 December and averaged 350kg. They have gained 1.4kg/day since weaning.
Bulls were introduced to meal at housing, starting off on a calf starter mix. They quickly moved on to a 16% grower ration and first-cut silage.
The ration consists of maize meal, sugar beet pulp, maize gluten, barley, soya hull and distillers, plus minerals and molasses. The ration costs £205/t.
Silage has a feed value of 29.7% dry matter, 10.8 ME, 12.3% protein and 68 D-value.
Bulls are currently on 4kg/day of the ration. Costing silage at £25/t, the daily feed cost is approximately £1.20/day (£0.82 meal + £0.38 silage).
Bulls will move on to 5kg/day of ration in early January. After this, they will be built up to ad-lib levels with a target slaughter date for early June.
We have struggled to get bulls into fat class 3 in the past. This year, the bulls will be moved on to a high-energy (high starch) finishing ration with lower protein levels over the final four months prior to target slaughter date. This should help improve fat covers.
Heifers
The 15 March-born heifer calves averaged 322kg on 16 December and have gained 1kg/day since weaning.
They are being fed 2kg/day of the growing ration and first-cut silage. Body condition is good, possibly too good at the moment, with heifers carrying plenty of flesh.
The best of these heifers will be kept for replacements next year, so meal will be cut from the diet in the new year in preparation for early grazing.
Building herd numbers and tightening the calving spread
We put 78 cows and heifers to the bull this year and scanning results showed that we will have 70 breeding females calving in 2018. Of the eight cows that were empty, three had caesarean sections this year and three were the last to calve, which left two cows with no real reason for not going in-calf. The empty cows will be fattened and killed.
I am trying to get cow numbers up to 70, so we are almost there. If we lose any cows between now and calving or shortly after, I will consider buying in some freshly calved heifers from a known farm.
Calving pattern
Tightening the calving pattern is a key goal for the farm. We have had too many cows slipping in calving date, either due to a sub-fertile bull or just poor fertility.
My target for this spring is to have 60 cows calving in March and April, with the remainder running into early May. Based on scanning results, cows are coming forward in calving date, but we still have room to improve.
Tighter calving will deliver several benefits. I work full-time off the farm, so having a streamlined herd will ease the workload and time pressure.
It will also benefit the bull finishing side of the farm. Having more March- and April-born calves means they are heavier at housing, so they will have a shorter feeding period in the shed. This will reduce concentrate levels and improve margins on bulls.
Heifer replacements
With the March-calving cows housed on 22 September and late-calving cows housed on 20 October, there were a lot of heavy grass covers on the grazing block this autumn.
To graze out swards, we have been able to keep 18 replacement heifers out at grass until 8 December.
Heifers were split into two groups of 11 and seven to reduce the risk of poaching.
Heifers were rotationally grazed and ground conditions have held up surprisingly well. They are now on second-cut silage until calving.
Blood samples were taken from cows and heifers on 13 December to determine what course of pre-calving mineral supplementation will be required.
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