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It has been a long winter in east Galway - rain, hail, sleet, snow, frost, freezing snow, rain and, did I mention, rain.
With spring on the horizon we can’t complain too much. We have half a pit of silage left and while the slurry tanks are almost full, two or three dry days will set us on the right path. I sold an artic load of hay to a man from Leitrim last week, he told me it would be May before they would get stock out.
Last time I put pen to paper, I had plans to soil-sample the farm and act on the results. While soil-sampling was not an issue, trying to get lime or potash out has been.
I phoned one of our local merchants in early November to order muriate of potash and we had plans to spread when we got a few dry days. It is now after Valentine’s Day and the land is still not fit for travelling.
With extra stock on hand, as we have our dairy heifers with us on top of our sheep and beef stock, there is worry there that we won’t have enough spring grass.
I’ve been keeping an eye on soil temperature here lately and it’s holding steady at 6°C, so once land dries a little bit we will be covering any fields with a decent cover with a bag of urea and anything with low covers will get 2,500 gallons of slurry.
The rape crop we put in for the heifers has been challenging, but successful. I put in 15ac of rape and am on target to get four months of grazing for 70 yearling heifers, or R1s as the cool kids say.
They were supplemented with 2kg of 19% protein nut and baled hay or silage. We didn’t weigh them going on, but we did weigh in January and they averaged 235kg, which is on target for Jersey crossbred animals. Although a few fell below target they were separated and kept on 2kg of nuts, while anything over target was fed less meal.
Outwintering is not a job for the faint hearted - heading out to move fences in the snow or trudging through the muck to get meal into troughs can be tough going, but the pros far outweigh the cons. Of all the beef and dairy cattle on the farm, the ones outwintered are by far the healthiest and most content. The focus for this ground will soon shift to getting it back into grass. There is only the small matter of lambing 450 ewes first.
Lambing
Speaking of the ewes, I was very happy with how they scanned at 1.85 lambs per ewe. For an outdoor lambing flock this is exactly where I would like them to be.
The figure I was most happy with was the 2% empty. I’m putting this figure down to culling hard over the last few years, keeping their feet right, a rising plane of nutrition in the lead up to mating, including giving a pre-mating bolus, and finally, using lots of rams.
We only had rams out for five weeks, as with lambing starting on 17 March and heifer mating to start on 1 May, I wanted a small bit of calm between the two. I also didn’t mate ewe lambs this year as it’s the first year in a long time that I’m not increasing my breeding flock.
We introduced concentrates to the ewes last week, which was six weeks from due date. I priced two different places. Both had the same protein percentage and both were the same money, however one of them had 21% soya and the other 12% soya. As this is one of the biggest drivers of the ewe having milk, this is a big difference.
It’s very important for the ewe’s diet and your pocket to get a proper ration or nut, so don’t rush out and buy the cheapest one you see, as it may cost you in the long run. Also, matching concentrate feed levels with silage quality is very important.
We tested all the silage here last autumn and it ranged from 67DMD to 74DMD, so we are feeding the best stuff to triplets and twins with the lesser stuff going to heifers or singles. We will increase concentrate levels to 0.5kg, 0.75kg and 1kg, split in two feeds to singles, twins and triplets respectively.
Body condition
Ewes are in good body condition. I keep an eye on this as they pass through the yard once a week for foot bathing. Any ewe dropping condition will be moved to a smaller group and shown some extra kindness.
Over the next few weeks, we have to finish freeze-branding the heifers and they have to get their lepto vaccines. The ewes are also due their annual clostridial vaccines.
We have some fieldwork to tidy up before lambing, mainly collecting timber that was blown down during the numerous storms the winter brought us and repair any fences.
I’ve also been lucky that one of the best grassland dairy farmers in the country lives only a few miles away from me, so I’m doing a day here and there with him to pick up different skills that will make next spring easier on myself.
On another note, hopefully we will receive our long-awaited Knowledge Transfer payments. I partook in a sheep group and a beef group, neither has been paid yet.
Off-farm I also got engaged at Christmas. My new wife-to-be might have got a bigger sparkler had the KT money hit the bank account on time.
Farmer Writes: battling 43°C in central Queensland
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