Successful autumn calving period in Co Tyrone

Autumn calving has been a dream this year. For once, the weather has been on our side in the west of the province and helped us realise our most successful autumn-calving period ever.

Calving started on 15 August, with 19 out of 25 cows calved inside four weeks, which accounts for 75% of the herd. All 19 cows have a live calf at foot.

The remaining six cows should be calved inside the next three weeks, according to scanning dates, and just by physical appearance, they appear very close to calving.

The cows were served to stock bulls and we have the first calves born from our new Simmental bull.

Calf quality is pleasing so far and he has been easy to calve, although cows have been in ideal condition for calving down.

Management

Dry cows were grazing on rougher land on the out-farms this summer and brought back to the yard to calve.

They calved outside in a paddock beside the yard and, with cows being fit, they were calving unassisted.

The calves were getting to their feet quickly and sucking their mothers, which is also a big help and one less job for us to do.

After calving, cows were put straight to good-quality grass on the grazing block at the home farm.

With plenty of grass available, they were not offered meal, but they were offered mineral licks to combat tetany.

Housing

However, the weather has become more changeable in the past week. So with plenty of silage on farm, we took the decision to house the autumn cows last Tuesday.

This will allow them to settle into the shed and on to their winter diet before the start of the breeding period on 15 October.

From experience, we have consistently found that housing the autumn cows a few weeks in advance of the breeding period has resulted in higher conception rates.

Since housing, cows have been offered high-quality silage bales made from surplus grass in June and July.

They are also getting 1.5kg/day of concentrate, which will be increased to 2kg/day at the start of October and continued to the end of the breeding period on 15 December.

Priority group

We still have plenty of grass to graze off, but the autumn cows are now a high-priority group on farm in terms of getting them back in-calf.

They could have stayed at grass for another fortnight. But, in the past, where cows remained at grass until the start of October, we normally ended up housing multiple cattle groups at the same time, which isn’t ideal in terms of cattle health in young calves.

With the autumn cows now settled in the house, newborn calves are getting our full attention and have been vaccinated for pneumonia using a nasal applicator. This should help them develop immunity before other cattle come into the sheds.

In the past, we have always had a challenge to get sufficient weight on spring-born bulls before housing. The target has been to get bulls to 300kg by October.

Lighter bulls take longer to finish and they also have had issues with pneumonia in the past, compared with the stronger calves.

To increase housing weight, we removed the stock bulls on 1 August and cows were split into bull calves and heifers.

The creep feeders were put with the bull calves four weeks ago and they have been fed an average of 1.5kg/day per calf of a grower ration since then.

This is the first year we have used the creep feeders at grass and calves appear to be thriving. They are due to be weighed at housing, when they will be weaned.

We are planning to house the bulls around 25 September to coincide with our annual herd test. Bulls will be offered high-quality silage from surplus grazing. As this will have a higher feed value than grazed grass in late September, the bulls will perform better indoors.

Heifers

We have close to 30 days of grazing ahead of cattle. After the spring-born bulls are weaned, the plan is to stretch grazing for as long as possible using cows and spring-born heifer calves.

Grass quality is excellent, with high-quality regrowth in the past few weeks. There is also silage aftermath coming back into the rotation after we made a third cut of grass in August.

Silage quality

Silage has been analysed and first-cut made on 27 May has a feed value of 38% dry matter (DM), 13.7% protein (CP), 11.5 Mj ME (energy) and 72 D-value, which is excellent quality. Predicted intake is also high. This will be targeted to growing cattle, such as bulls and autumn cows.

Second-cut silage made on 6 July is also good-quality at 29.3% DM, 12.6% CP, 11.1 Mj ME and 69 D-value and is suitable for feeding to autumn cows and store heifers. We also bought in some silage earlier this year. It has a lower feed value at 67 D-value and will be targeted to dry spring-calving cows to maintain body condition.

The herd is generally up to date with management tasks. We scanned 25 spring-calving cows and have 23 animals confirmed in-calf. We have also scanned 25 replacement heifers and had 24 animals confirmed in-calf.

There are still 50 spring-calving cows to scan and this will be carried out when they are brought home for the annual TB test.

Herd health

Spring-born calves have now received their booster vaccine for pneumonia and have been wormed for lung and stomach worms well in advance of weaning and housing.

Along with vaccination and worming, a staggered approach to housing will hopefully reduce problems with pneumonia this autumn.

All cattle will be treated for fluke around two to three weeks post-housing using Fasinex. Once treated, we will take dung samples a few weeks later to determine how effective the treatment was.

This has worked well in the past, with only a small number of animals requiring a second drench.