The Irish Farmers Journal Thrive dairy calf to beef programme was fully rolled out in 2019. However, the programme really began in earnest in 2018 when the Irish Farmers Journal purchased over 100 calves.

For the past year, these calves have been contract-reared on the farm of John Hally, in Cashel, Co Tipperary.

Over the four years of the programme, this farm will act as a demonstration farm. It will be used to highlight the performance that can be achieved in a dairy calf to beef system if the right calves are used, combined with an extremely high level of calf and grassland management.

There are issues with the quality of calves coming from dairy farms, so this programme is focusing on using AI sires to show the performance that can be achieved if you start off with a higher-quality calf. All calves placed on the farm last year were either Aberdeen Angus, Hereford, Limousin or Belgian Blue. So far, these calves have been weighed a total of eight times over the past 12 months.

All calves purchased in 2018 were born in the final two weeks of February and throughout the month of March. Early calves are important when it comes to driving performance off grass, especially in the first grazing season. The breakdown of calves was 40% heifers and 60% bulls.

Sires used for 2018 calves were AA2163, DFD, EBY, GGM, JZJ and KZP. The individual performance of each bull has been recorded and will be examined in more detail.

The Irish Farmers Journal will pay a rearing fee of €1/day for all animals on the farm and will also cover milk replacer and animal health costs. Fertiliser and meal costs will be covered by the farmer with a focus on encompassing as much grass into the diet as possible over their lifetime.

The target will be to be finish a large portion of the Angus and Hereford heifers off grass, with supplementation for the final two months prior to slaughter at 18 to 19 months old. The aim is to have all cattle finished at 24 months of age.

Full performance of these animals will be recorded and reported online and in print over the coming year.

Calf performance

Calves purchased for 2018 averaged €282/calf. Calves were generally three to four weeks old before they arrived on the farm. The majority of calves were turned out to grass in the first week of May and were weighed again on 1 June 2018, when they averaged 101kg.

This increased to an average of 210kg by the end of September, with calves receiving 1kg of concentrates throughout the grazing period.

Calves were housed at the beginning of December and fed 2kg of concentrates per day over the housing period while on 78 DMD silage. Stock were weighed again in January 2019 and averaged 324kg. This equates an average LWG of 0.95kg/day since the calves arrived on the farm.

If we break this down further, heifers were averaging 306kg in January with a daily LWG of 0.9kg from when they arrived on the farm, while steers averaged 337kg with a daily LWG of 1kg.

Concentrate feeding was cut back to 1kg/day towards the end of January, with calves out to grass from mid-February onwards. Cattle had to be re-housed briefly in March during periods of unsettled weather but were predominantly at grass from mid-February. Yearling cattle are on a 100% grass diet and will be over the summer period.

2019 calves

Just shy of 150 calves have been purchased for this farm in 2019. Again, these are a mixture of Angus, Hereford, Limousin and Belgian Blue from Dovea, Progressive Genetics and Munster Bovine AI bulls. The average price for calves in 2019 is €220/calf.