This week sees the start of second-cut silage, with 117 acres being harvested at Abbey Farm, Cafre’s beef and sheep development centre.

Conditions for harvesting and ensiling grass are excellent. The target will be to get silage mowed in the afternoon or early evening when grass sugars are at their highest.

Normally, grass would be wilted for a 24-hour period, but with such dry conditions, a 10- to 12-hour wilt is sufficient.

Ensiling second-cut grass above 35% dry matter is of no benefit. In fact, allowing grass to become too dry (above 35% DM) may actually increase field losses during the ensiling process without any benefit in feed quality.

Grass silage is the primary source of feed used when cattle are housed and is the next cheapest source of feed available after grazed grass.

With this in mind, silage production is well planned out, with a focus on ensuring all operations from fertiliser and slurry spreading to harvesting are completed at the most appropriate stages.

Fertiliser planning

This results in the ability to harvest high yields of top-quality silage. After first-cut was ensiled in mid-May, chemical fertiliser applications were completed at the earliest opportunity, ensuring a swift start to grass regrowth.

Slurry was then applied using a dribble bar to optimise the availability of nutrients for grass growth.

The benefit to using the dribble bar during drier periods is that chemical fertiliser can be applied quickly after first-cut silage is harvested and slurry can be successfully applied without contaminating grass, even when some regrowth has taken place.

Fertiliser applications were altered for individual fields, depending on soil nutrient status and the recommendations from Cafre’s online farm nutrient calculator.

A significant quantity of silage was carried over from last year and with good first- and second-cut yields, some fields will not be required to close for a third cut.

Weaned lambs from Hill Farm will start to come down to Abbey Farm from mid-July and together with increased demand from existing stock, further silage will only be taken out as required to manage the grazing wedge.

Grassland management

Grass management software has been used to record weekly grass covers. This information is used to make decisions on what actions are required to match weekly grass supplies to stock demand.

After a late turnout this year, weekly grass measurements have been crucial in matching stock demand with supplies. These have ensured the highest quality of grass is always in front of all stock and also ensured surpluses were identified early and removed, allowing valuable reserves of silage to be built up.

Before second-cut was harvested, the grazing platform was carrying a stocking rate of 2,936kg of liveweight per hectare.

To feed this stocking rate, a weekly grass growth of 75kg DM/ha was required. Last week, growth was just 50.1kg DM/ha, resulting in a slight deficit emerging. But this will be rectified with second-cut aftermaths coming into the rotation shortly.

As well as weekly grass measuring and budgeting to ensure the higher quality swards are available for cows, the next step to maximising calf performance is to get calves forward grazing.

Creep facilities will be installed in electric fences and gateways over the coming weeks to allow calves to access to grazing fresh grass ahead of the cows.

Where cows are forced to clean out paddocks, particularly in the later stages of a three- to four-day shift, calves may have too much competition for grass.

Allowing calves to forward graze should help to improve performance, as well as helping to weaken the cow and calf bond and also potentially reduce worm burdens.

Bull beef

All male progeny born in the suckler herd at Abbey Farm are slaughtered as young bulls. To date, 17 out of 26 bulls born during spring 2017 have been slaughtered. The remaining nine bulls will be slaughtered over the next month.

Slaughter data for the 17 bulls indicates an average carcase weight of 380.4kg at 13.7 months of age. Bulls were typically U grading, with a fat score of 3+.

After weaning in late autumn, bulls have been fed high-quality silage on an ad-lib basis, with a maximum of 8kg/day of a high-energy 12% protein finishing blend.

Concentrates are fed twice daily to reduce digestive upsets. Slaughter data shows cattle meet market specification on weight and fat class.

Daily carcase gain was 0.9kg/day, which is good. However, the aim is to improve this over time.

Using the best genetics available within the Stabiliser breed and looking to improve growth rates of bulls while suckling the cow will help to achieve this.

Breeding under way for spring-calving herd

A group of 30 potential replacement heifers were examined for breeding soundness and synchronised using CIDRs.

They were all served to AI on 13 and 14 June using semen from the Stabiliser bull Givendale Black Premiere. The bull has desirable EBVs for calving ease and excellent all-round performance.

Synchronisation reduces stock bull requirements and crucially allows the use of sires with proven traits such as calving ease, which is important with heifers.

Heifers will be monitored for repeats and artificially inseminated as required. Two batches of 24 and 25 cows are being covered with the Stabiliser stock bulls Capelle Sion and Knapton Wold Savvy.

Both stock bulls were semen tested prior to joining the cows on 29 May.

A further 21 cows are being artificially inseminated to observed heats using semen from the Stabiliser bull Givendale Black Resolution.

All AI and stock bulls used are homozygous polled, which means all calves will be polled, even when born to horned cows.

Heats recorded

Cows are monitored during the breeding period, with all heats recorded. There were three cows in this group that did not show heats during the first three weeks of breeding.

They have been examined by the farm’s vet, which was a worthwhile procedure. The cows proved to be cystic and required treatment.

This should not be necessary in the future, as there will be a surplus of females to breed. However, with the herd building towards the target of 90 cows, these animals were required for breeding this year.