Rain has arrived in Tullamore in the last seven days and with more rain forecast this week, it is hoped that things can get back to normal as soon as grass growth picks up again. We are almost out of our silage bale supply, which was made on the farm in May and we have started to feed some hay to stretch silage supplies. The farm is still using five bales daily along with meal being fed to calves.

Calves are consuming 1kg to 2kg daily. This will add to 2018 costs but will hopefully mean that calves don’t suffer a change in growth rate. The ration is costing €280/t and if every calf is eating on average 1.5kg/day, it is costing €40/day or €280/week to feed them. This meal feeding is likely to continue until housing in November. Male calves were not creep-fed last year and suffered a growth change around weaning.

Six tonnes of 18:6:12 were spread over 120 acres last week in a bid to kickstart grass growth. The rain will hopefully help this to work. Thirty-five acres of silage will receive their second cut before being baled at the weekend. These fields will be fertilised again to try to get a third cut in September.

Grass growth

Grass growth improved over the past seven days but it still a long way off what it should be. Recorded growth came it at 33kg/DM/ha/day. With cows held up on sacrifice paddocks, demand is 15kg/DM/ha/day. Average farm cover rose from 422kg/DM/ha last week to 533kg/DM/ha this week. There are four paddocks this week that are over 1,000kg/DM/ha, so hopefully one group of cows will return to grazing at the end of this week.

There has been just 43% of the 10-year average rainfall recorded in Mullingar (the nearest weather station to Tullamore Farm) so far this year. Some 92.5mm fell during May, June and July, while the 10-year average for these three months is 214mm.

Lamb/bull drafting

There have been 45 lambs drafted so far. The average liveweight at slaughter was 44kg. Average carcase weight is 20.3kg with an average price of €104.50. Lambs are continuing to graze aftergrass and are also being fed meal in troughs daily. Fourteen bulls have been drafted for slaughter this week and are being slaughtered today, Wednesday. Nine bulls remain and will be slaughtered in the next two weeks. Twenty dairy-beef cross heifers weighing over 420kg have been pulled out of the main group and will continue meal feeding on aftergrass. These heifers are currently being fed 4kg/day and will change to 5kg/day when moved to aftergrass.