To increase farm output, a number of the farmers taking part in the Northern Ireland Suckler Beef Programme have moved to finishing spring-born male cattle as young bulls. This has allowed them to increase carcase weights and increase cow numbers, thereby producing more output from the farm.

However, a profitable bull beef system requires high levels of technical efficiency. A farmer who makes an average job of finishing steers will not make money from moving to a bull beef system. High levels of concentrate feeding are required to finish bulls.

But, as meal levels increase, the animal must be gaining sufficient weight to cover its feed costs. This requires regular weighing of stock to ensure weight gains are on target.

Getting sufficient fat cover on a young bull is another challenge. Feeding too much protein will prevent the bull from laying down fat, resulting in a lean carcase which is often penalised.

Housing is also important. Bulls can start off in a pen in early winter with sufficient lying space. But as the winter progresses and the animals get bigger and heavier, they no longer have sufficient space requirements.

This will cause animal performance to suffer. Trying to remove cattle to different pens will create problems, as bulls become aggressive when mixed with different animals, which can lead to injury.

For the programme farmers, several have finished male cattle from the autumn herd as bulls, and they are transitioning carefully to a spring-born bull beef system. So far, as outlined on the farm of John and Joe Milligan below, it has been a successful move, helped in part by the fact that beef price has been relatively stable this spring. The Milligan’s intend to increase the number of males finished as bulls next year.

John Milligan, Castlewellan

Weather eases calving and lambing workload

It has been a busy fortnight, as calving and lambing is now under way. Thankfully, the weather is relatively settled and has allowed us to turn freshly calved cows out to grass within a day of calving.

Ewes and lambs are also going out to grass within a day of lambing. This is a real saving in terms of labour and feed requirements.

Newborn calves and lambs are also much healthier when they can go straight outside rather than being kept indoors.

If a cow calves in the evening, then she goes out to grass the following day. If a cow calves during the day, it will go straight out if I am happy that the calf in suckling its mother and it is a dry day. Cows are being moved to an outfarm to graze.

We have 50 cows and 14 heifers to calve this spring. So far, we have 25 cows calved in 10 days, with the peak period of calving to come in the next fortnight.

Cows are calving to Simmental and Angus stock bulls, while heifers are calving to an Angus bull. We also served a few cows with a crossbred Charolais-Limousin bull. So far, there have been no problems.

Cows were wintered on silage only to maintain body condition. Once calved, they are on grass only. We are offering no concentrate, as we have plenty of grass ahead of stock and sward quality is excellent. This will be a good cost-saving.

Mineral supplementation

After blood samples had shown low mineral levels, we decided to bolus all cattle going to grass this year.

That includes cows, which received a mineral bolus in February covering the pre- and post-calving period, as well as the subsequent breeding season.

The bolus costs £5/ head, which is basically the equivalent value of 2kg of liveweight.

If cattle are lacking in minerals such as iodine or selenium, they will not be growing to their potential.

Lambing

Lambing started on 1 April and we have 100 ewes lambed, with another 150 ewes still to go. Ewes are housed pre-lambing on mesh slats and fed silage and concentrate. Once lambed, they are grazing paddocks beside the main farmyard.

As we have plenty of grass ahead of stock, ewes are not being supplemented post-lambing. They appear to be milking well on grass only and lambs are thriving.

Turnout

Store cattle were turned out to grass three weeks ago. We put 50 heifers out to grass, which is made up of 36 animals born in spring 2016 along with 14 autumn-born heifers that have just been weaned. The spring-born heifers weighed 340kg liveweight at turnout, so they are well on track to reach their target breeding weight of 420kg by June. We will probably put a bull with this group for nine weeks. Once scanned, we will keep enough replacements for our own herd and probably sell off surplus heifers in-calf in September. Along with the heifers, we also put 40 store bullocks out, which are mainly dairy-bred animals. These were calves bought in autumn 2015 for double suckling. They will be grazed until September, with the strongest animals finished off grass. Some lighter bullocks may be housed early and finished by December. There are also 40 dairy-bred calves bought last autumn. They will be grazed, wintered and grazed to finish in autumn 2018.

Change of direction

This winter, we decided to finish some of our spring 2016 male calves as young bulls. We kept 12 cattle as bulls. The remaining 15 animals are back at grass and will be finished as steers in December.

This is our first time to try this and, so far, it has been a success. We killed two bulls last week. One bull was 12 months and three days old at slaughter. His carcase weighed 411kg and graded U-4-, which we are delighted with.

The second bull was one day over 12 months old. He weighed 391kg when killed and graded U-3+.

We will probably kill the rest of the group at the end of this month once they are all over 12 months old. We were targeting 13 to 14 months of age before slaughter, so they have really exceeded expectation.

Bulls were eating 5kg of ration before Christmas and built up to ad-lib from there. They were fed maize meal along with bull nuts and silage for roughage.

The bulls weighed 407kg on 14 December and now average 610kg liveweight. They have gained up on 2kg/day since December.

At 650kg liveweight and 60% kill-out, they will hit 390kg carcase weight.

At a liveweight gain of 2kg/day and 60% kill-out, the bulls are gaining 1.2kg of carcase every day. Taking a beef price of £3.50/kg, this is a daily income of £4.20 before feed costs.

Assuming bulls are eating 12kg/day of meal costing £180/t, plus 10kg of silage at £20/t, the animals have a daily feed cost of £2.36, giving them a margin over feed of £1.84 to cover fixed costs.

We will most likely move to killing more bulls next year and probably just keep Angus cattle as steers as they qualify for the scheme bonus.

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All reports from the Northern Ireland Suckler Beef Programme