I try not to let things I can’t control annoy me, but the 2016 breeding season has been frustrating.

It’s been a strange year on the breeding front, with a few cows repeating anywhere from 18 to 46 days.

This is not happening all cows, mainly those who were held indoors the longest. After last year, I had concerns it could be the bull but repeats happened across all groups.

Minerals were cut back a bit, which in hindsight was probably a stupid decision and having most calving in February and early March with no opportunity to get out until April didn’t help either.

Back in the pre-shed days, March was the busiest calving month by far. Maybe this is nature’s way of saying there wasn’t a lot wrong with that.

Messy

We’ve had a run of messy springs over the last few years and our cows calving closer to grass have the shorter calving intervals so it might be the route to follow. Keep the heifers calving in early February to graze the farm and hold the older cows back.

Now I could rectify it by feeding ration or building extra housing for longer but that’s just creating artificial cows and environments with costs that outweigh the benefits.

Procrastination has no part in grass management, especially during Irish silage season. Silage was completed last week and all that’s left is a few acres just knocked for hay or haylage depending on what the weather does.

A lot of chances were taken. Some worked well, others didn’t, but the target here is to have all silage cut by the middle or end of July. From there on, the aim is to build up covers for a growing herd. Grass management differs slightly from dairy farming as demand is increasing throughout the year, factoring in calf, heifer and two and three-year-old cow growth.

Taking the calves alone, if they all averaged 1.2kg/day growth rate then it’s the equivalent of putting an extra two-year-old cow on the farm per week.

Spending

The aim of our grazing plan this year was to reduce spending and make as much silage as conveniently as possible. We top-loaded the rented ground with cattle to avoid bringing bales back from there and this also allowed for a lower fertiliser use on the silage ground.

Despite this, the grass growth spurt that came in June saw a dozen bales made there all the same. Earlier this week, 10 cows with bull calves were brought back from there to Ardfield as natural grass growth is lowering.

Having those animals out of the system here allowed extra ground to be taken out for reseeding. Seven acres were completed two weeks ago and another five at the start of this week.

Key to reseeding success is having it as a must-do job every year. It isn’t the ordeal it once was as we’ve experimented with it over the years. Disc, one-pass and roll is now our standard.

Ploughing and stone picking have been dropped out of the reseeding routine, likewise the old standard lashing out of three bags of 10:10:20 per acre.

In its place, one field got a coating of dung and the other a heavier coat of slurry. Both fields will get some artificial nitrogen over the next few weeks. Soil samples revealed index 4 for P and K and soil pH of over seven so there was no need to throw any extras on. It’s a nice saving too.