Watch: harvesting second cut silage on NI BETTER Farms

There was a flurry of silage activity earlier this week as some programme farmers looked to make the most of the fine weather which provided ideal conditions to mow, wilt and ensile, or bale grass.

While weather always plays a big part in silage making, you have to be in the position to take the opportunity during these short windows when conditions are ideal.

This is where farm planning comes into play. On the programme farms, the farmers work closely with programme adviser Francis Breen to plan out when key tasks will be completed.

For instance, despite a difficult start to the grazing season, silage ground was still taken out for cutting in mid- to late May. Most farmers managed to harvest grass on time, with a few running into early June.

Within a week of cutting, silage ground was then closed up to have a potential second cut of grass ready from mid- to late July.

This was also aided by super growing conditions during the past month, which helped boost grass yields.

Once second cut grass is harvested, this land will join the grazing rotation for August, helping to ease stocking pressure and build grass covers for extending grazing well into autumn.

Silage aftermath will also provide high-quality grass for the herds that operate autumn calving. It will also provide a grazing block of top-quality grass for weanlings should the farmers with early born spring calves look to wean calves in early September.

Week in review

Gearing up for autumn calving

My autumn herd is due to start calving in early August and they are currently grazing on older less-productive swards to control body condition.

There are 26 cows and heifers in this group and all animals are served to AI bulls, with Simmental and Limousin bulls used on cows.

Limousin and Red Angus were used on heifers.

I find that August is a good time to calve cows, especially if the weather is on your side. Cows will be brought home for calving soon.

They will be kept in a paddock next to the yard for supervision and will calve outside as much as possible. If there are any difficulties, cows can easily be moved into the adjacent handling pens if necessary.

The autumn cows are in good condition and a big advantage of this herd is that cows are fit having been at grass all summer, which helps to cut down on calving difficulty. Cows are getting minerals through lick buckets pre-calving.

Post-calving management

Once calved, cows will be moved to good-quality grass. I have second-cut silage due to harvest now and this will provide ideal grazing in August, with clean swards of high-quality aftergrass. With cows on these swards, they should not require any concentrate feeding.

Depending on weather, cows will stay at grass until the beginning of October. They will be housed early to settle on to the winter diet ahead of the indoor breeding period.

Cows will be bred to AI again, as I am seeing the benefits of using top sires in terms of calf quality and growth rates.

Building numbers

I have 12 heifers to be served to try to increase the autumn herd to my target of 30 cows for next year. As with the cows, the heifers will be housed in early October to settle before breeding.

Heifers and cows will be served to natural heats for the first five weeks of breeding. After this point, any animal not seen in heat will be synchronised and served to fixed-time AI. I am planning to keep the breeding season for the autumn herd to eight weeks in total.

Rumen fluke stalls weight gain in bulls

Last year’s autumn-born male calves are at grass and will be housed around 1 September for intensive finishing as young bulls.

The plan is to have these bulls finished before Christmas.

At present, they are on grass only, but I will introduce meal to them in early August to get them used to the change in diet post-housing.

There are nine bulls in this group and they are running with six bullocks born in spring 2016. These animals were too light at housing to kill as bulls this year.

At their last weighing on 1 July, the autumn bulls averaged 365kg liveweight with a daily gain of 1.11kg/day from 12 June.

I was concerned that the bulls were not thriving as well as they should have been, plus they had very loose dung and were empty looking.

After taking a few dung samples, the results showed the bulls had a high burden of rumen fluke, so they were treated with Levafas Diamond.

Since treatment, bulls are looking much better, although I am still keeping a close eye on them in case they are hit by rumen fluke again.

The bullocks were also weighed on 1 July. They averaged 474kg liveweight and have gained 1.3kg/day from mid-June. As they are running in the same group as the autumn bulls, they were dosed for rumen fluke as a pre-caution.

Spring-born bulls slaughtered

Last year’s spring-born bulls were slaughtered from April to June at around 14 to 15 months of age. I killed nine bulls and they averaged 376kg deadweight.

The heaviest bull was a Hereford-cross animal weighing 417kg deadweight and graded U=3+, while the lightest bull was a Salers-cross animal weighing 337kg.

This was my first time killing spring-born bulls and I am pleased with how they performed.

But I think I could improve on this performance next year, as you can always make a few tweaks here and there around feeding rates to push animals that bit earlier.

For instance, bulls were offered 2kg/day of concentrate from weaning to November, then increased to 3kg/day through to February and then built up to ad-lib. This is something we will look at this autumn after weaning.