There’s no fear of anyone being idle around here in Abbeyleix at the minute. The last few weeks have been all go, with the good weather really driving things on and leaving plenty of jobs to be tackled every day. Everything seemed to move at once between breeding, grass, silage and stock work.

The breeding season is moving on well now and thankfully most of the breeding bulls have been sold, with just four still left to go. Demand for good bulls stayed strong and it’s always nice to see them heading off to good homes. My own stock bull will head down to Tipperary this week alongside the heifer calves, where he’ll be used to clean up after the maiden heifers.

We also sold the bull calves over the last two weekends. The trade was solid enough and I was happy with how they performed overall. The older weaned calves averaged €550/head, while the younger calves that were still on milk averaged around €300/head.

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Grass growth continues to surprise me here. I had started to think growth was slipping back slightly because conditions had turned dry enough, but after walking the farm and measuring covers I was pleasantly surprised to see growth coming in at 70kg DM/ha. We only received 17mm of rain over the last fortnight, while other parts of the country got a lot more, but thankfully it seems to have been enough to keep grass moving.

Cover per cow is sitting at 213kg DM/LU currently, although there are no heavy covers really standing out across the farm. Pre-grazing yields are around 1,500kg DM/ha, which is keeping quality where I want it. I haven’t any paddocks marked for bales just yet, but if growth stays strong for another week there should be surplus grass appearing fairly quickly.

Milk production is holding well too. The cows are averaging 27 litres with solids at 4.20% fat and 3.85% protein, so overall I can’t complain there. SCC and mastitis are still causing headaches though. Bulk tank SCC has been hovering around 200,000 for the last few weeks and we’ve had more mastitis cases than I’d like to see. Hopefully with weather conditions improving, things might begin to settle down.

We milk-recorded last week and 10 cows came back over 500,000 SCC. We’ll test those cows now and treat accordingly. I already have one cow marked for culling because of SCC problems and depending on the next recording there could be another few joining her. It’s never ideal culling cows for SCC, but there comes a point where they become too much trouble in the herd.

We also unfortunately lost another cow last week. She had been showing irregular rumination activity on the collars for a number of weeks and just never seemed fully right. The vet had advised stomach pumping her along with a long-acting antibiotic and she would improve for short periods before slipping back again. After the post-mortem it turned out she had a tumour in her stomach, so realistically there was little chance of recovery. It’s disappointing to lose any cow, particularly when you’ve spent time trying to get her right.

First-cut silage

First-cut silage was also taken over the last week. We cut on Sunday and had it picked up by Tuesday in ideal conditions. The crop wilted lovely and yields were very good, so I was delighted with how it turned out. We’ll move quickly now to get slurry back out on the ground at around 2,500 gallons/acre to drive on second-cut growth.

Breeding has gone fairly smoothly so far. After three weeks of breeding there are only five cows still not served. I scanned those cows last week and two needed CIDRs to get cycling again, so hopefully all five will be served shortly. Repeats have been quiet up to now too, which is always encouraging.

For now, the aim is just to keep on top of everything while conditions remain favourable. There’s plenty happening every day, but good weather makes a big difference to workload and morale around the place. Long may it last.