Last Friday, the BETTER farm beef challenge NI participants travelled south as part of an annual trip organised for the programme farmers. On the last leg of the trip, the group paid a visit to Brian Doran’s farm in Wicklow, one of the BETTER farm beef challenge counterparts from the south.

On what was a bitterly cold autumn day, the mood was anything but cool and much discussion was generated by the visiting party with Brian, BETTER farm adviser Tommy Cox and local Teagasc adviser Eoin Woulfe.

The two-hour long visit was filled with questions and answers. Here are just some of the more interesting questions asked:

What size are the paddocks on the farm and how are they working?

Brian pointed out that “all the paddocks on the farm are roughly three acres in size”, while Tommy added that “each paddock has water points in the centre of the paddock so that while there are 24 permanent paddocks, Brian has the potential to subdivide these and create 48”.

Given the fact that Brian is running only two groups of stock, one group of 50 cows and calves and one group of 60-plus steers and heifers, he was asked how often cattle are be moved. “They are two day paddocks. By the second day, the cows would be roaring alright but they clean it off very well. Before, I used to be busy topping. Since I put in the paddocks, the topper is pretty much redundant.”

Are you creeping the calves?

“Calves go under the wires themselves” said Brian. “In terms of meal, I don’t give any to the calves. They are started on concentrates as soon as they are weaned.”

Brian explained that his steer system means he is only storing animals over the winter for early turn-out next spring, negating the need for early meal feeding.

Weanling weights are excellent – would you consider finishing young bulls?

Brian explained that previously he had a very irregular calving pattern and "as a result, I hadn’t an even group of calves to justify finishing a group of young bulls together”.

Programme adviser Tommy Cox then explained that Brian has tightened up the calving spread on the farm now.

"From next spring, calving will begin in early January and end in March. When we see how the calves go, there should definitely be an option to finish bulls under 16 months. Brian is consistently achieving daily gains of 1.3kg/day in his bull calves so it will definitely be considered.”

Weaned cows on bare ground with weanlings grazing in the background.

What is the vaccination programme on the farm?

Tommy Cox explained: “Brian vaccinates cows for leptospirosis and calf scour and calves are vaccinated for pneumonia [IBR, Pi3, RSV] and clostridial disease.”

Brian added that previously he was under pressure treating calves with scour or pneumonia, but that has changed.

"The vaccines are expensive but when they are done it stops a lot of firefighting,” he said

When asked about BVD, Brian said he wasn’t vaccinating for BVD and one of the visiting farmers suggested this was a big risk. “We had a few PI calves last year and it’s not nice having to get rid of them,” he said.

What is the ideal cow type on the farm?

First-cross cows from the dairy herd are Brian’s preferred cow type. Many of the visiting group commented on the size of Brian’s cows and questioned whether big cows were an issue on the farm?

Brian isn't concerned. "The land type is very good down here, so turning out these cows in the spring or running a large group of them together in wetter periods wouldn’t be an issue," he said.

Tommy Cox posed the question that if Brian were to breed more of his own replacements, what sire should he use on the cows? The general response was that a Simmental bull would be a very nice cross, but to watch in case too much Simmental would cause cows to get too big over time.

  • Listen to the podcast below to hear Brian, Tommy and Eoin’s summary of the visit.

    • Listen to "BETTER Farm NI Visit re-cap" on Spreaker.