The biggest difference between farming out here and at home has to be the scale. Land is sold in 160ac blocks called quarters and each quarter would hold a max of about 20 cows and calves for the year. This is because the land tends to dry up in summer and it doesn’t make economic sense to spread fertiliser on it. The livestock could also be kept large distances from the farm and some of the trucks that left the yard had to go up to about 100 miles or more showing the scale of the farms. The farm I am on runs a 700-cow Angus/Simmental cross herd of suckler cows. Dustin keeps the calves as steers and heifers and sells them late in the year when they have been weaned off their mothers.

Cows begin to calve in early March, just as they come out of their winter and temperatures begin to go above 0°C. However this is not always the case and just before we arrived in early April temperatures were as low as -20°C with multiple calves being born every day. This was made even worse by the fact Dustin’s herd calves compactly as he wants to get out to the field for planting by mid-April.

Our first job most mornings for the first few weeks was checking for newborn calves

All of Dustin’s herd calves outside if temperatures are warm enough and so our first job most mornings for the first few weeks was checking for newborn calves. When weather is cold, the cows are brought into the barn before calving as the calves would die in the sub-zero temperatures outside at birth. If a new calf was found they were tagged with the same colour and number tag as its mother and then given an electronic tag in it’s ear. Canada is unlike Ireland here as no calves have to be registered and Dustin just uses these tags for ease of management. The steer calves then get a band to cut off the blood flow to the testicles, making them steers. The cows and calves are then moved into a pen for freshly calved cows and calves.

Out to grass

All the calved cows and calves go out into a 20ac field called the ‘Little Pasture’ and are fed out here until they are taken away to grass. When in this area, we had to separate each pair and bring them inside in order to vaccinate the cows and calves. This was an ongoing task for a week or two as there would’ve been up to 500 pairs in the field at any one time.

Branding

Once in, we had to brand the calves which is a common occurrence out here and involves putting a hot iron onto the side of the animal and holding it there for about 10 seconds leaving a permanent mark on the side of their skin. Dustin’s brand is DH underlined. The steer calves also get an implant of a hormone into the ear which helps to improve growth rates.

The cows are also then injected for both pneumonia and blackleg along with getting a Trodax pour-on. Dustin has a hydraulic crush which is a great help as the cows would be less used to being handled than Irish cows and so good handling facilities are a must. Once all injected, they are loaded onto the cattle liner which holds 30 cow-and-calf pairs and contains three rows so would be a lot bigger than any Irish trailer.

Seeding

We have also spent some of the time since we arrived getting the machinery ready for the start of seeding. This includes getting Dustin’s new 80ft seed drill set up with his tractor and also greasing up and running through any of the older machinery. I plan on going into more detail in the next article about the machinery and the tillage side of the farm as it would impress anybody with even a passing interest in machinery.

Michael is travelling as part of his work experience. Michael is a winner of the Agricultural Science Association - PWE Travel Bursary Award which is supported by the Irish Farmers Journal and Glanbia.

Read more

Farmer writes: Grappling with a GPS system

Student blog: Monday meetings the most important hour of the week