John Egerton, Fermanagh

I have regularly walked the farm over the past fortnight to assess grass covers and ground-carrying capacity for stock and machinery. I am keen to get stock turned out as well as fertilizer and slurry applied.

Generally, ground is still very wet and, despite high soil temperatures, grass growth over the past month has been poor. I have a rain gauge, which showed a cumulative total of 12.5in of rainfall in January and February 2014 compared to 7in over the same period last year.

Despite poor spring growth, there are good grass covers on the driest paddocks closed up at the end of October and spared from sheep grazing.

Although the entire farm is not suitable for grazing, I have managed to turn out young stock onto the driest paddocks.

The autumn-born calves have been let out during the day since the beginning of March. They were born last August and September and are the lightest stock on the farm. They are averaging just over 250kg liveweight.

So far, this is working really well. The key is not allowing them to run over a whole field. I have divided fields using electric fencing, which means that calves are on a specific area for a maximum of two to three days.

This means that calves are getting fresh grass and do less roaming across wetter areas, which results in less poaching. Moving the cattle regularly, even daily if required, also gives soil and grass a chance to recover from any surface damage.

The management of calves over the winter has made this job much easier. Since housing, calves have been penned out of sight from their mothers, with access provided twice daily to allow suckling.

Therefore, as calves are turned out to grazing, there is no stress on cows as calves have been accustomed to separation. Up until turnout, the bull and heifer calves achieved a daily liveweight gain from birth of 1.21kg and 1.02kg/day, respectively.

This was achieved on an average winter intake of 1kg of meal per day, commencing with 0.5kg and being built up to almost 2kg/day at turnout.

Meal and silage is still being offered at night but consumption has more than halved since turnout. Meal will continue to be offered in the evening as long as calves are housed to maintain growth rates. By feeding in the evening this leaves calves hungry at turnout, leading to more grass intake.

Last year’s spring-born heifers were turned out to some of the driest paddocks last week. At turnout, these cattle can cause significant damage immediately after being freed from housing.

I find that removing animals’ feed the evening before leaves cattle hungry at turnout. This gets them settled quicker and ensures cattle have eaten a full stomach of grass before any evening dew or frost.

There are 19 heifers in this batch at an average 352kg liveweight on 8 March. They gained 0.66kg/day since housing last autumn. This is the best batch of replacement heifers I have produced so far and should easily reach a target bulling weight of 380kg by the end of May.

Indeed, this leaves me with a surplus of replacements to choose from. All 19 have been vaccinated for BVD. I intend inseminating them all and selling any surplus guaranteed in-calf in late summer.

The heifers are mainly Limousin x Salers x Simmental crosses. They will be inseminated to proven Limousin bulls and a sexed Salers bull, Whitebog Convener.

Calving is now under way for the spring herd, which are all due within eight weeks. The first heifer was bulled on 27 May and the last on 20 July 2013. Although it has a relatively low heritability, I think planned crossbreeding, managing cow condition and only retaining heifers with larger pelvic areas is leading to easier calving.

It has also helped to improve overall herd fertility in recent years.

The autumn herd had the poorest fertility, mainly due to the fact that this herd was initially made up of cows which had slipped out of the spring herd. But, like the spring herd, by continuing cross breeding and managing condition score, I managed to get 18 autumn calving cows and 10 replacement heifers in-calf between 20 October and 8 December.

To assist bringing forward some of the later calving cows, I injected seven cows with Estrumate. All seven cycled within five days and all held in-calf. I put PRIDs in three replacement heifers and two cows and set time inseminated at 48 and 72 hours after removal. Two of the heifers and one of the cows held in-calf.