We will start breeding again this week in Clara, despite having a dozen or so cows still to calve. These should finish up quickly enough over the next two weeks.

Some beef bulls are carrying a few days extra, but most are springing up well now.

We have moved to al-fresco calving over the last two weeks, with both cows and calves responding well to the clean, fresh environment outdoors.

They are very restricted on grass, but have plenty of hay in a ring feeder and some dry-cow mineral buckets to keep milk fever at bay.

We have decided to AI the heifers this year before running bulls with the repeats.

We will tail-paint the heifers and serve them on observed heats

We are synchronising them with two shots of prostaglandin 10 days apart. We will serve after the second shot, which should bring on a standing heat in well over 90% of the heifers over a few days.

We will tail-paint the heifers and serve them on observed heats. They will then be run with Friesian stockbulls to pick up repeats. We will use sexed semen on half of them and see at scanning how that compares to conventional.

We will quickly switch to conventional straws and use Friesian sires predominantly for the first six weeks of breeding

Any heifers not seen in heat will probably just be left off with bulls as long as numbers are low.

We will also use a small bit of sexed semen on cows over the first week of breeding.

We will quickly switch to conventional straws and use Friesian sires predominantly for the first six weeks of breeding.

All replacement heifers should be born by mid-February

We also have plenty of beef straws to throw into the bottom end of the herd as we go along.

The plan is to be finished calving at the end of March next year, with all beef calves from mid-February onwards.

All replacement heifers should be born by mid-February, which should keep everything very simple.

Grazing

The weather has been a little harsh over the last couple of weeks, but also very dry, which has been a big help with clean-outs as we finished off the first round of grazing. We are still feeding 4kg of meal and will have to continue until growth rates lift a little.

We have some fields closed for silage

We are comfortable on grass for the next two weeks or so and hopefully we’ll get a bit more kindness by then.

We have some fields closed for silage that we could dip back into in case of emergency, but hopefully it won’t come to that.

Milk price

We will have to keep an eye on milk deliveries as we move through the month and try to avoid oversupply fines from Glanbia.

We have our target set and it looks OK, but probably easier to comply with if grass takes off and we can drop meal to 3kg rather than 5kg or 6kg in a grass deficit.

We also have a new fixed milk price scheme to mull over for the next few weeks in Glanbia.

The payment is 42c/l for this year and 40c/l base for both 2023 and 2024. It will also track upwards if feed costs rise, with an upwards only adjustment.

It’s a strong price, but well matched by very strong costs in the debit column at the moment.

If costs come back a bit over the next few years, it could leave a strong margin, but if the price of inputs stay high, we would need every bit of it.

On the positive side, it gives a good indication of where prices are likely to go over the next few years, with demand for dairy looking likely to outstrip supply for the foreseeable future.