Growth recovery

Growth is slowly recovering on Tullamore farm this week, with a growth rate of 43kg/DM/ha/day being recorded over the past seven days.

Average farm cover has stayed at 657/kg/DM/ha, with a daily demand of 34kg/DM/ha/day.

Farm manager Shaun Diver had expected growth to recover more but only small amounts of rain fell in the past seven days and the farm would benefit from more rain.

A bag of 18:6:12 was spread two weeks ago and this has benefited paddocks greening up, but growth is still a little slower than expected. All stock have now returned to normal grazing, with silage and hay ceasing to be fed. Calves continue to be creep fed 2kg/head/day.

Calves were weighed last week and bull calves are gaining 1.15kg/head/daily and heifer calves are gaining 1.08 kg/head/daily. These weights are back 6% for bull calves and 3% for heifer calves when compared to 2017 weight gains. Creep feeding has helped to maintain weights over the past six to eight weeks when cows and calves were stood off on sacrifice paddocks. A further 35 lambs were drafted for slaughter last week at an average carcass weight of 20.4kg and an average price of €104.50.

A bag of 18:6:12 was spread two weeks ago and this has benefited paddocks greening up, but growth is still a little slower than expected.

Fodder budget

The farm requires 1,309 tonnes for the winter months. This is based on a six-month winter for some classes of stock, including suckler cows.

We would hope that the winter will not be as long as this and heifer weanlings will be able to get out to grass from early March onwards. Eighteen acres of hybrid brassica was planted last week (12 acres of redstart and six acres of interval). If this yields three tonnes of DM/ha it will supply 21 tonnes of dry matter for the farm.

Redstart can account for 70% of an animal’s diet, so bales of silage will be placed in the field in the coming two weeks and will be fed out to weanlings during the winter months. If 350kg heifer weanlings are going to be grazed, they would require 7kg of dry matter to be allocated on a daily basis. If brassica accounts for 70% of the diet, that’s 5kg of brassica daily and 2kg of silage daily. If there is 200kg dry matter in a typical bale of silage, that’s one bale to 50 heifers every second day.

Farm walk

Tullamore farm opens its doors this Friday 17 August for two farm tours. The first will take place at 11am and the second at 2pm. Topics that will be covered include animal performance, fodder budgets, forage crop establishment and building grass covers for autumn. For enquiries, contact Adam Woods on 087-1218 734.