It’s been a long seven days on Tullamore Farm with the first snow landing last Tuesday night. All sheds froze during this period as well and we managed to get an outdoor house going and were able to fill IBC tanks to keep water to stock during storm Emma. Bulls were kept on ad-lib meal through the storm period as taking them off meal would upset the digestive system too much and would have meant we would have had to build back up again.

Keeping water to stock added greatly to labour requirements during the past week on top of an already very busy period on the farm with cows calving and ewes coming up to lambing. Shed space is at a premium and the farm is probably lacking a suitable shed to house cows and calves after calving.

There were 17 cows and calves outdoors and they were doing fine until Wednesday when they had to be housed in fear of Thursday’s forecast. This meant putting more cows ready to calve into loose straw-bedded sheds and it increased the straw requirements for the week but everything has come through the week safe and sound with no major problems to report. Cows and calves were turned back out on Tuesday this week.

There were 59 dairy X beef heifers outdoors on grass during the last seven days getting silage and meal on a sheltered paddock and they too have come through fine and are back to normal grazing good covers of grass.

A calf shelter was constructed on the farm to provide shelter for calves during storm Emma

A calf shelter was constructed on the farm to provide shelter for calves.

Calving progress

Calving continues with 38 calved so far with three losses and one set of twins. Calves have been successfully fostered on two of the heifers that lost calves. Both bull calves were purchased from a neighbouring dairy farm with known health status for €300 each. While it wasn’t ideal purchasing calves in from a health point of view, it was felt that as they were heifers and very quiet, it was worth putting calves on them. If this was an old cow or there was any other reason to cull, the cow would have been culled.

Most cows have calved themselves but we have had three sections, two have been with heifers and one in a second calving cow with the calf presented backwards. Bull calf average birth weight at the moment is 46kg and heifer calf birth weight is 41kg.

Cows are being fed 0.5kg soya bean meal for four weeks prior to calving and are also receiving 100g/day of a good-quality dry cow mineral. There has been one incidence of calf scour so far.

The sample was sent for analysis and it confirmed cryptosporidium. If further cases occur we will look at treating all newborn calves for seven days. For the moment, straw bedding has increased and cows and calves are being turned out as soon as possible.

Grass

The past week has put to bed our plans to get heifer weanlings out to graze. These heifers will be turned out as soon as possible and getting grass into their diet is critical for them to meet their target breeding weight of 380kg in May to calve at two years. Average farm cover is at 521kg/DM/ha. Dairy heifers have been cleaning out covers very well since they started grazing two weeks ago. Urea has been spread on 120ac of the driest fields on the farm at the rate of 35units/ac. Once the rest of the farm is dry enough it will get the same rate of urea. Grazed paddocks will also get slurry as tanks are filling up again after slurry was spread in early February.

Sheep

Ewes are being fed meal in advance of lambing at the end of the month. Ewes carrying triplets are currently on 0.5kg/day of a 20% protein ration while ewes carrying twins are on 0.3kg/day of the same ration. To increase lying space in sheds 74 ewes carrying singles and twins are on a paddock beside the yard being fed silage and some feed buckets. This has left more space for supplementary feeding indoors. Ewes have scanned very well with a scanning rate of 2.11 which includes 43 triplets, 112 twins, 15 singles and no empties. Two ewes have been lost in the past three weeks with suspected listeriosis. Ewes have since been changed onto pit silage and started meal feeding.

Plans for next 3 weeks

  • Turnout weanling heifers as soon as ground conditions allow.
  • Turnout more cows and calves.
  • Finish spreading urea on the rest of the farm.
  • Spread slurry on grazed paddocks.
  • Prepare sheds for lambing.
  • Continue calving.