Despite it being a quieter time of the year, it’s been a relatively busy week on Tullamore Farm for manager Shaun Diver.

The mature cow herd has been scanned, with Shaun having been nervous beforehand due to an issue with the farm’s Salers stock bull that was let in to sweep up after AI, but a confirmed 72 of the 77 cows bred have scanned in-calf.

Approximately 80% of these cows are scanned in-calf to high €uro-Star rated AI bulls, with milk kg and carcase kg targeted when selecting sires.

Slurry

The last of the slurry went out this week, with the contractor spreading it on some of the drier paddocks with covers of less than 500kg dry matter per hectare (DM/ha).

Ground conditions were trafficable, with Shaun commenting that the use of low emissions slurry spreading technology allowed him to spread slurry on paddocks with some cover of grass on them, which was really useful.

Lamb draft

The largest draft to date of lambs for the factory was done this week, with Shaun sending 107 lambs - a mix of ram and ewe lambs - to slaughter.

Rams had been on concentrates, but ewe lambs were finished off grass alone, with Shaun seriously impressed with the fat cover of these ewe lambs off grass.

All lambs graded either a U or R grade, with a fat score of 3 or greater. The average carcase weight of the group was 21.28kg, with an average price paid of €136.99/head.

A full analysis of the kill-out percentage of these lambs will be reported in the paper in the coming weeks.

Ewes are cleaning up the last of the paddocks after lambs grazing them and will soon move on to good-quality swards in preparation for breeding.