This week saw the last of the 2024-born calves on Tullamore Farm weaned off cows, consisting of 23 late spring-born heifer calves. Cows have been housed post-weaning, while calves remain at grass.
This week saw the last of the 2024-born calves on Tullamore Farm weaned off cows, consisting of 23 late spring-born heifer calves.
Cows have been housed post-weaning, while calves remain at grass.
As previously mentioned, the farm took a new approach to weaning this year’s heifer calves, with anti-suckle paddles put into calve’s noses one week prior to weaning, with calves remaining at grass with their cows and the paddles restricting calves from suckling.
Seven days after the paddles were put in, cows were removed from the bunch and housed.
We were pleasantly surprised with how well this worked, with little or no stress being shown by either calves or cows.
Cows were dried off completely due to the calves being unable to suckle, with udders kept clean during the process, as cows were still at grass, greatly reducing the risk of mastitis - compared with drying cows off in slatted sheds.
This is a process the farm can see itself adapting into a weaning programme further into the future.
At grass
The 39 heifer calves born this year remain at grass and are receiving 2kg of 16% protein weanling ration per day.
The troughs are set up in the crush area of the outfarm and calves travel on roadways to the troughs daily to consume meal.
They are allowed to eat in their own time, while other herding or tasks are carried out, with gaps left open to allow calves to return to the paddock which they are then shut back in to.
This reduces poaching or degradation of soil around troughs and also means troughs don’t have to be moved from paddock to paddock as heifers move on. A weight will be taken of these heifers in the coming weeks.
Bull weanlings are indoors and have settled well on baled silage and 3kg of meal, with no health issues to report over the initial housing period.
Twenty-seven cull cows have been built up to ad-lib meal, with the hope of slaughtering these before the end of the month.
Breeding progressing well
Breeding has progressed well on the sheep side, with in excess of 90% of ewes mated in the first two weeks.
Ewe lambs were joined with rams last week, with 25 Easycare ewe lambs running with an Easycare ram and 40 homebred Suffolk and Texel-cross ewe lambs being divided up between three Charollais stock rams.
Rams were swapped around this week to provide protection from fertility issues with any of the rams, due to single sire mating being practiced.
Raddle colour was changed to monitor repeats and first services were recorded through the Sheep Ireland app to allow us to keep track of ram performance next spring.
Fifteen ewe lambs continue to be fed 350g of concentrates/day with the hope of slaughtering these before Christmas.
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