I spent last Saturday gathering up all my beef cattle and putting them in the shed. Ground conditions are good and there is plenty of grass around, in fact I would go as far as to say grass is still growing well.
So why am I housing cattle I hear you ask?
Well these are all cattle that I intend to finish. The majority of them are around 500kgs and its time that they were starting to get a bit of meal to get them warmed up.
Also, to be honest, it is just much easier to feed them in the shed than it is to start bagging up meal and carrying it out to the field and feeding it in troughs.
Especially if the weather forecast is correct and we get the amount of rain that is being predicted for the week ahead.
It takes a bit of time to get cattle to transition from a grass diet to a silage and meal diet. And then more time to get the meal built up to an adequate level to see significant performance.
It’s not something that can be rushed, so I made the decision last week to house these cattle this weekend and get the process started.
There is also great pleasure in housing cattle when you are not under any pressure to do so, before you’ve run out of grass or trampled a field due to heavy rain.
Donegal Farmer, James Strain. \ Clive Wasson
Dairy Heifers and store lambs
Another incentive for me to house these cattle is that it takes the pressure off grazing the dairy heifers for a while as well.
It is also about time that I started to buy some store lambs. I would normally have started buying at this time of year, but the good cattle grazing conditions coupled with the high prices being paid for store lambs have so far curtailed me.
Unfortunately, I’ll not be able to wait much longer as my newly reseeded red clover field is just about ready for grazing and although ground conditions are good and this field was stitched and not ploughed, I don’t think I want to let cattle graze it for the first time.
I am grazing my other reseed with cattle at the moment and thankfully I am getting away well so far, fingers crossed we don’t get too much more rain until I get finished.
I’m grazing it with a batch of dairy heifers, and they are cleaning it out well with little to no damage.
I spent last Saturday gathering up all my beef cattle and putting them in the shed. Ground conditions are good and there is plenty of grass around, in fact I would go as far as to say grass is still growing well.
So why am I housing cattle I hear you ask?
Well these are all cattle that I intend to finish. The majority of them are around 500kgs and its time that they were starting to get a bit of meal to get them warmed up.
Also, to be honest, it is just much easier to feed them in the shed than it is to start bagging up meal and carrying it out to the field and feeding it in troughs.
Especially if the weather forecast is correct and we get the amount of rain that is being predicted for the week ahead.
It takes a bit of time to get cattle to transition from a grass diet to a silage and meal diet. And then more time to get the meal built up to an adequate level to see significant performance.
It’s not something that can be rushed, so I made the decision last week to house these cattle this weekend and get the process started.
There is also great pleasure in housing cattle when you are not under any pressure to do so, before you’ve run out of grass or trampled a field due to heavy rain.
Donegal Farmer, James Strain. \ Clive Wasson
Dairy Heifers and store lambs
Another incentive for me to house these cattle is that it takes the pressure off grazing the dairy heifers for a while as well.
It is also about time that I started to buy some store lambs. I would normally have started buying at this time of year, but the good cattle grazing conditions coupled with the high prices being paid for store lambs have so far curtailed me.
Unfortunately, I’ll not be able to wait much longer as my newly reseeded red clover field is just about ready for grazing and although ground conditions are good and this field was stitched and not ploughed, I don’t think I want to let cattle graze it for the first time.
I am grazing my other reseed with cattle at the moment and thankfully I am getting away well so far, fingers crossed we don’t get too much more rain until I get finished.
I’m grazing it with a batch of dairy heifers, and they are cleaning it out well with little to no damage.
SHARING OPTIONS