The days are getting notably shorter over the past week and, unfortunately, the ground is getting noticeably softer. All the beef cattle got a worm dose two weeks ago and I kept a pen of the heaviest heifers in the shed and started to feed them.

I think if I get to the weekend, I’ll bring in the rest of them and start building them up on meal as well.

When the weather becomes inclement and grass dry matter decreases, the weight gain from grass can be small enough. It takes a while to get cattle in and settled on a different diet before they start to gain weight, so I often find it is better done a week or two before you actually think you should be doing it.

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Housing cattle always indicates that winter is not far away, but sometimes a change to the daily routine is not unwelcome. Days at grass was always something I was trying to maximise when I had cows. Light stores would have gone out in February or March, weather depending, and calves could often be kept out to November, again weather depending.

Now, days at grass from my beef cattle are actually quite short. Stores are bought from January to March and this spring it was mid-April before it was suitable to let them out, while now they are being housed in mid-September.

These cattle would be housed now no matter what the weather is like, because they need meal introduced and it is just much easier and safer for me to feed meal in the shed than it is to be driving around the fields on a dark morning before work.

However, although the days at grass may be shorter than I would ideally like, performance at grass was generally good. There were huge variations, as there usually are. The worst-performing heifer gained 0.3kg per day, while the best-performing heifer gained 1.3kg per day. The two heifers were treated exactly the same and were grazed together.

Genetic potential would be the first thing you would think of, or else the poorer-performing heifer, although she looks perfectly healthy, had some kind of health issue when she was younger that is affecting her performance now. That is one thing you can’t see, no matter how good a cattle buyer you are, when you are standing around the ring.

Thankfully, there were a lot more cattle leaning towards the 1.3kg than there were at the 0.3kg. For me, that is probably the most encouraging thing of all – the cattle have performed well at grass, and now it is time to make the most of them over the winter. The novelty of carrying meal, I’d say, will soon wear off.