With spring-born calves still housed on the BETTER farms, ensuring these animals are well managed is a top priority for the programme farmers.

However, this management now extends to more than providing a straw-bedded creep area. With a large percentage of spring-born calves close to four to five weeks old, these animals require clean drinking water and a source of forage to stimulate rumen development.

Calves should be offered fresh silage, free from mould, along with straw. Ideally, calves should be able to access forage in a separate creep area along with a small level of a starter concentrate.

Calf health is another management area on which the programme farmers are trying to focus at present. With cows entering the final weeks of the calving period and the increased workload from feeding higher numbers of housed cattle, it is easy to overlook calf health and vaccines before turnout.

Routine vaccinations for blackleg, and tasks such as dehorning, should ideally be carried out before cattle go to grass. BVD vaccines should also be given to cows now before they resume grazing.

Silage

With an increase in temperatures forecast, grass growth should be on the rise. Fertiliser will be applied to silage ground now before the application of slurry as ground conditions are still soft.

Applying chemical fertiliser as a priority means silage can be cut in early June. If ground conditions allow, slurry can then be applied next week.

Week in review

  • Cows and calves are being brought up to date with vaccines prior to turnout.
  • Calves are being provided with clean water and fodder.
  • Chemical fertiliser will be applied to silage ground this week to kickstart growth.
  • Slurry will only be applied if ground conditions allow.
  • Farmer Focus: Alastair McNeilly, Muckamore, Antrim

    Herd management benefiting from compact calving

    My farming system is based on a spring-calving suckler herd with male progeny finished as steers. Last September, I had 58 cows and 30 heifers scanned in-calf for this year.

    I sold off one in-calf cow after scanning and there were also a cow and a heifer that aborted, which left me with 85 animals to calve down this spring.

    The first calf was born on 16 March and by 16 April, 62 animals have calved with 60 living calves on the ground.

    All should be calved within 12 weeks and I would expect to have 80% calved in the first six week of the calving period. One set of twins has helped make up for three calf losses. One of the twins was fostered on to a first-calving heifer.

    My longer-term target is to get 85 calves weaned annually, so I will be falling slightly short of this target this year. For me to achieve this, I realistically need a minimum of 90 cows and heifers scanned in-calf annually.

    I am generally pleased with the tighter calving pattern. Last year, calving ran from late December through to August. It should leave me with more even batches of cattle for finishing, enable better use of inputs and allow my labour inputs to become more streamlined.

    Most cows and heifers have calved themselves, with the three losses coming down to unexplained deaths where I was not present at calving.

    I also have a poultry enterprise. With no additional labour employed on farm, I simply cannot be present for every calving. Cows received a scour vaccine and pre-calving minerals. To date, I have no disease issues.

    Cows have calved down to Limousin and Aberdeen Angus stock bulls, while heifers are all calving down to an Aberdeen Angus bull (Woodvale Prime Time) that was purchased last spring.

    This bull was selected based on having desirable EBVs for calving and growth. To date, his calving ease traits have come to fruition, with calves generally born unassisted.

    His growth traits now need to materialise. The gestation length of my Angus bull is running at least one week shorter than the Limousin.

    Post-calving management

    Due to ground being too wet on the home farm, all freshly calved cows are housed. Most cows are brought into individual pens to calve and, after bonding, they are penned in a larger bedded area with five to 10 cows.

    Once calves are five to 10 days old, cows are returned to slatted pens, with calves given access to straw-bedded creep areas. This is working well.

    First-calving cows are penned separately to mature cows. These first-calving heifers are getting ad-lib silage and 2kg of concentrate daily with mature cows receiving 1kg/day.

    As well as helping cows to milk and maintain condition, this supplementation is also being used to stretch fodder supplies. I should have just enough forage to get me through until early May.

    Turning out young stock to grass

    Similar to the situation with cows, I have been unable to get 2017-born cattle out to grass as early as I would have liked.

    A group of 12 stores born last year were turned out on 7 March but were rehoused a week later. These animals were mainly steers and the lightest of last year’s cattle.

    They were tuned out again to my driest field on an outfarm on 7 April. A further 19 steers joined them on 14 April. Twelve of these steers average 330kg, with the other 19 animals averaging 410kg. These steers will have access to 13 acres of grazing.

    With a total weight at the moment of 11,750kg, I would hope to be grazing approximately 1,000kg of liveweight per acre on this block from now until late June.

    I plan to set-stock these steers and manage an average farm cover on this block of 2,200kg DM/ha. It had an average cover of 2700kg DM/ha last week.

    I hope to do this through weekly grass measuring with topping and fertiliser targeted to maintain grass height and quality. It will be interesting to see the weight gain per hectare on this system.

    With an average weight of 390kg at present, I would like to be housing these cattle at 550kg by mid-September.

    All grazing ground received 25kg/acre of urea per acre in March. Silage ground received one bag of urea to date, with most of this area also receiving 3000 gallons/acre of slurry.

    Soil analysis indicates that the majority of my land doesn’t need any extra P or K, but on those silage fields that do, they will get slurry over the next week, with the remaining nitrogen requirements also spread on silage areas.

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