Over the coming weeks, the programme farmers will be looking to start filtering cattle back to grass after a long housing period.

Turning cattle out to grass in March or early April is not a matter of opening the doors and letting the herd start to graze.

Cattle will be prioritised for turnout, starting with smaller groups and building numbers as grass growth increases and ground conditions permit.

One of the first groups to go to grass will be replacement heifers for the spring-calving herds. These animals are a high priority, as they have to reach target breeding weights of at least 400kg by June.

Cattle that will be finished next winter are also prioritised for early turnout, followed by spring-calving cows with calves at foot.

Fertiliser

Getting cattle out to grass will depend on weather and grass growth. Getting fertiliser on to grazing ground will be a top priority in the coming weeks to kickstart grass growth.

Slurry has been spread on drier land with lower grass covers.

Chemical fertiliser should be applied to grassland that is carrying some level of residual cover, as this will give the best, and fastest, growth response to nitrogen.

Spreading 30 to 40 units/acre of CAN and urea will suffice where soil fertility is good and on ground that has also received slurry.

Where soil fertility is low, and no slurry is available, using a compound NPK product will give a better growth response than nitrogen-only products.

Week in review

  • Spring calving is progressing well on farms.
  • Cows are moved on to silage and concentrates post-calving.
  • Slurry has been applied to grazing and silage ground.
  • Ground conditions are improving after last week’s snow.
  • Farmer Focus: Barry Carty, Garrison, Co Fermanagh

    Spring calving and autumn breeding

    Since joining the programme, I have been making a real effort to streamline the calving pattern. In the past, cows would have calved from mid-summer right through to late spring.

    Although I have only been in the programme one year, I can start to see some of the changes made on farm beginning to take effect.

    The majority of the suckler herd is autumn calving, as it suits land type much better. Breeding finished for the autumn herd in January, having started back on 15 November.

    To try to compact the autumn calving period, some July and early August calving cows were held back from breeding for a couple of weeks.

    All being well, I should have most of the herd calving in a tight group next August and September.

    Cows were bred to AI for a period of just over eight weeks, then the stock bull covered any repeats or cows that were late to come into heat.

    I served the cows to AI myself and mostly used the Charolais sire Fiston. He is a proven sire, with strong carcase traits. My stock bull is also a Charolais and was purchased last autumn.

    I have scanned the cows that were served early to AI and there are 20 scanned in-calf. There are another 15 cows that calved in November, but were not served long enough to be scanned. I will scan them in a couple of weeks.

    Building numbers

    I want to settle at 40 autumn-calving cows. To boost numbers, I have just purchased seven in-calf heifers direct from a known farm with a good herd health programme and sound breeding.

    These heifers are scanned to calve in August, which will suit my planned system. Moving forward, I think buying in in-calf replacements from the same source every year will simplify my system.

    It will also allow me to focus on using terminal sires to produce high-quality calves for the live trade.

    Silage

    Autumn-calving cows have been on ad-lib silage and 2kg/day of meal since housing. I am still feeding meal to try to stretch silage reserves slightly.

    However, I made the decision to wean 10 of the earliest autumn-calving cows in the past week to ease the pressure on silage.

    These cows were moved to a different yard and are being offered straw to help them dry off.

    Weaning was straightforward, as the calves had access to a creep area and were used to being locked away from the cows. They were also on meals over the winter period, so it was a stress-free process.

    Spring calving drawing to a close

    While some herds will only be starting to calve now, my spring herd is almost finished calving.

    I changed my breeding programme last year to leave me with a herd of 20 cows calving in early spring.

    Calving started six weeks ago and I have just four cows left to calve, with 15 cows and live calves on the ground. The other four cows should be finished calving before the end of the month.

    The spring cows are calving to a mix of AI sires and my old Charolais stock bull.

    This year, my plan is to have all spring cows served to AI or the stock bull while they are housed.

    My land is heavily fragmented, which makes it difficult to try to breed spring-calving cows at grass.

    Having the cows settled in-calf before turnout will be a better option for the herd.

    Culls

    I sold three cull cows through the mart a fortnight ago. One cow is a spring-calving animal that lost her calf, while the other two animals were autumn-calving and scanned empty.

    The two autumn-calving cows had been suckling calves which were weaned before sale. The cows were in good order and sold for £1,230 and £1,080, with the other cow being dairy-bred making £700.

    Stores

    Another positive change to the farm system has been to carry calves over winter and sell as yearlings.

    Normally calves are sold live at weaning, but it was always a struggle to get enough weight on them before sale. My spring-born 2017 calves were wintered on silage and 2kg/day of a 16% growing ration.

    There were 21 in the group, which were a mixture of steers and heifers. They averaged 404kg liveweight at sale time, which I am pleased with.

    My plan is to sell the strongest autumn calves in May at a similar weight. The autumn calves that were weaned are over 300kg and on track to meet the target sale weight.