I unfortunately had to re-house my store heifers after last Tuesday night. Tuesday night/Wednesday morning saw around 28mm of rain fall in less that five hours. Wednesday night into Thursday morning was not much better.

My calves are in full time at the minute also, as land is now saturated. A far cry from two weeks ago when I could almost travel through any field in the jeep.

I found myself with limited options when my cow tank filled up

Because of the mild winter we’ve had and higher than normal grass covers, I found myself with limited options when my cow tank filled up a couple of weeks ago. I came up with the brain wave of mixing the tank and getting my contractor to spread a piece of land I have away from the house. This land had been grazed with lambs and was bare enough to spread. As it’s away from the yard, it doesn’t get an early grazing, it just gets closed for silage straight away.

Back to square one

The field was spread, the tank lowered by a good two foot, and I was delighted, thinking a great job was done and the pressure was off until I was closing up my silage ground. However, Mother Nature had different ideas! The heavy rain washed silt down the yard, blocked a gulley and refilled the tank again. Now I’m back to square one! “Them’s the breaks,” as they say.

Some 85% of the herd have now been inseminated using AI and the bull has gone in to pick up the rest. With the exception of six cows that were inseminated last week, all cows were served before 9 February, so I’m going to wait until 23 March to scan. This will let me know which cows need to go back to grass with a bull and which do not.

Cull cows

I sold three cull cows through Carndonagh Mart. The cows were of mixed quality and finish and although prices were well back on last year, I was happy enough considering the trade.

My first batch of bulls went on the lorry on Sunday, so I wait with bated breath to see how they kill out. They performed well, with the Charolais cattle averaging over 2kgs a day from the last weighing, which was three weeks ago.

The weather was good and the grass was plentiful and it pained me to house them at all

One mistake I did make, though, was that I didn’t house them early enough last autumn. The weather was good and the grass was plentiful and it pained me to house them at all. As a result, I only got slightly over 100 days’ hard feeding into the first batch to be killed.

These cattle will die well under the 420kg upper limit. But then again, they should grade well enough for fat score and carcass confirmation and there is less cost against them. So, I’m confident that they should do OK.

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