The Grieves farm 35ha near Castlefinn in Co Donegal. The farm is fragmented, but prevailing soil type is a heavy one. Gerard and his son John farm as a partnership, with Gerard Jnr also involved.

There will be 36 cows calving down in the spring of 2018, alongside 140 ewes lambing. The Grieves traditionally sold animals as weanlings or light stores, but were eager to push margins and take more animals closer to or all the way to finish.

Indeed, there were 50 cows calved on the farm in 2017, but in order to tighten up and drive individual animal output, the BETTER Farm team along with local B&T adviser Tommy Doherty identified poor-performing genetics within the suckler cow herd for culling. Fourteen cows were weaned and immediately sold (average price €780).

The typical Grieve cow at present is a medium-sized first- or second-cross (from the dairy herd) white-head. They will look to move towards a more continental-type cow or potentially introduce Saler females if they can be sourced.

“We’ll be going shopping for three or four in-calf heifers in the coming months. The plan is to be putting 40 to the bull next May,” John told me.

The grass

Normally, the winter months on the Grieve farm saw the ewe flock given free rein to mop up any remaining grass in advance of lambing.

This typically led to a grass famine in the spring when there was potential for young stock to get out to drier areas of the farm. However, this autumn, a 20-acre portion of the farm was grazed and closed from the first week of October. This will be earmarked for 17 heifer yearlings to go out as soon as ground conditions allow.

There is already a cover of 900kg on the paddocks closed in early October, but the urge to turn sheep in here will be resisted. Instead, the flock has been put to work grazing the wettest parts of the farm.

They will come in very handy too should a moist spring prevent the Grieves from getting cattle on to their silage ground in March. The sheep will be able to graze it off and ensure that quality is maximised come the target cutting date in late May or early June.

The change

Having normally calved from the turn of the year, the move toward selling forward stores and finishing will allow for more pressure to come off the Grieves’ grassland in the spring.

They can now afford to calve somewhat later – while weaning weight is still an important KPI, it is not the be all and end all.

That said, the 10 strongest 2017-born bulls have been penned and selected for an under 16-month finish. In seven weeks to 22 October, these bulls grew at a rate of 1.08kg daily (Table 1). They were being offered 68% DMD silage and 5kg of a 16% weanling concentrate daily.

The target for top bull beef systems is to have animals weighing 500kg on their birthday or as close as possible. At current growth rates, the Grieves will achieve a respectable 475kg average with the group.

However, this seven-week weighing period will have included the transition from a grass to a silage-straw concentrate diet – these calves were not creep fed prior to housing. Also, the Grieves are now going to use a pit of 73% DMD silage for these bulls and pull back on straw as the dung has hardened up. This 5% DMD increase is the equivalent to 1.5kg of extra concentrate feed going into these animals.

There is no doubt that the combination of a fully transitioned digestive system and the better silage will lift growth rates and get the Grieves’ bulls closer to the 500kg birthday mark.

For the first time, the Grieves will bring all of their progeny through a first winter. While it will put pressure on cashflow, the big sale of cull cows will help this year until the systems settle into place. As mentioned, the 10 strongest bulls have been selected for under 16-month beef. Their younger comrades will be targeted for sale at turnout time, with the idea being to capitalise on big demand from grass-buyers.

Their heifer yearlings will be earmarked for an early-turnout and a long grazing season, with the aim being to sell live as forward stores towards the end of August, having achieved a significant amount of liveweight gain at grass.