The focus in Tullamore Farm remains on taking steps to overcome tight grass supplies. This week’s growth rate was steady at 56kg DM/ha, with the average farm cover increasing from 540kg DM/ha to 612kg DM/ha. This is still well behind the target of in excess of 800kg DM/ha at this stage of the year to successfully build autumn grass supplies and, as such, steps continue to be taken to help build covers.
The 10ha (25 acres) removed from the rotation for a third cut of silage will be harvested as soon as weather permits with early reintroduction having the potential to boost the autumn rotation planner. Farm manager Shaun Diver says the option of grazing a percentage of this area with a lower cover could also be looked at if weather significantly delays cutting or ground conditions become tricky.
Fertiliser continues to be applied at a rate of 25 to 30 units after grazing with 10ha to be spread this week. The heavier heifers in the dairy calf to beef enterprise have been built up to 7kg concentrates, with these cattle coming close to drafting. Supplementation to the lighter batch of heifers has been stepped up to 5kg/head and this is also helping to stretch grass supplies.
A batch of 20 cull cows have been weaned and housed for finishing. Calves have become well-accustomed to creep grazing ahead of cows and are receiving creep feed at a rate of 1kg for heifers and 1.5kg for bulls.
The 40 replacement hoggets are undergoing an extensive quarantine programme to significantly cut down on the risk of introducing disease into the flock.
Drafting resumed
Grass demand on the sheep side of things will also be helped in the short term by 41 lambs being drafted for slaughter on Thursday. Drafting was skipped for a week with ewe lambs a few kilos away from the drafting target at the last weighing. Shaun felt ram lambs would benefit from an extra week’s feeding to help build a better cover of flesh.
The lambs were weighed on Monday. Ram lambs continuing to make up the greatest percentage of the draft, with 27 lambs selected. The lambs are averaging 48.7kg, with the lightest lamb selected weighing 47kg, while there are four just exceeding the 50kg mark.
The level of concentrates offered to ram lambs was increased to 0.75kg for the last three weeks and Shaun says it is really starting to deliver benefits, both in terms of liveweight gain and fat cover. There are 30 ram lambs left in this group with about two thirds over 40kg and the remainder lighter lambs weighing back to 35kg which will take longer to finish.
The 14 ewe lambs selected weighed 45.7kg on average with Shaun balancing selection decisions on liveweight and fat cover. The lightest lamb selected was 43.8kg, with this lamb at a higher risk of slaughtering fat class 4 if carried over until next week.
Again, about two thirds of 70 remaining lambs are in the weight range of 38kg upwards and provided they stay on target a significant percentage of these will be drafted over the coming month. Ewe lambs are receiving a much lower daily supplementation rate of about 0.25kg with the aim of allowing lambs to develop a frame and hopefully increase the average carcase weight returned.
Table 1 details a breakdown of slaughter performance for the 138 lambs drafted up to this week. The slaughter performance of the 41 lambs processed on Thursday will be available in next week’s weekly farm update on www.farmersjournal.ie. When these lambs are included the total drafting rate stands at 64% or 179 lambs. Lambs are marketed through the Offaly Lamb Producer Group with Shaun happy with how lambs have performed so far.
There has been strong interest in the carcase conformation of lambs from the Mule cross ewes and it is evident from returns to date that lambs will grade mainly R with a small percentage of U grades. The small number of lambs returning a fat class of 4 are ewe lambs which killed overfat despite being drafted at a light carcase weight.
Ewe management
Table 1 also shows slaughter performance of the batch of cull ewes. These ewes were receiving preferential treatment and access to good-quality grass along with a small batch of ewes falling behind target condition. The breeding ewes have now recovered to a body condition score of above 3 on average and have been joined back with the main group of ewes to reduce the number of grazing groups and make way for a grazing group of replacement hoggets.
The 40 replacement hoggets are on the farm now for two weeks and are undergoing a quarantine programme.
On arrival, they were housed for 48 hours and received the prescription-only medicine wormer Zolvix and a moxidectin-based wormer to guard against the introduction of resistant worms. There were also two liver fluke treatments administered along with regular footbathing. The hoggets are already on a programme for clostridial disease and will receive vaccination for toxoplasmosis and enzootic abortion over the next 10 days.
The final treatment is plunge-dipping, which will take place in advance of breeding. Hoggets will be run as a separate batch and mated with the two remaining Charollais rams. The average price of the hoggets is €176.75.
The two Texel rams recently purchased.
Breeding programme
The breeding programme is being slightly tweaked with Texel rams run with mature ewes this year. There was a hogget ram and a ram lamb purchased at the Sheep Ireland sale in Tullamore with these costing €820 and €540, respectively.
Both rams are terminally bred with the ram lamb possessing a terminal value of €1.11, a days to slaughter figure of -7.66 and lamb survivability of 0.83%.
The hogget ram has a terminal value of €0.74, with a lower days to slaughter figure of -3.26 but a higher lamb survivability figure of 1.06. Both rams also underwent an extensive quarantine programme.
The focus in Tullamore Farm remains on taking steps to overcome tight grass supplies. This week’s growth rate was steady at 56kg DM/ha, with the average farm cover increasing from 540kg DM/ha to 612kg DM/ha. This is still well behind the target of in excess of 800kg DM/ha at this stage of the year to successfully build autumn grass supplies and, as such, steps continue to be taken to help build covers.
The 10ha (25 acres) removed from the rotation for a third cut of silage will be harvested as soon as weather permits with early reintroduction having the potential to boost the autumn rotation planner. Farm manager Shaun Diver says the option of grazing a percentage of this area with a lower cover could also be looked at if weather significantly delays cutting or ground conditions become tricky.
Fertiliser continues to be applied at a rate of 25 to 30 units after grazing with 10ha to be spread this week. The heavier heifers in the dairy calf to beef enterprise have been built up to 7kg concentrates, with these cattle coming close to drafting. Supplementation to the lighter batch of heifers has been stepped up to 5kg/head and this is also helping to stretch grass supplies.
A batch of 20 cull cows have been weaned and housed for finishing. Calves have become well-accustomed to creep grazing ahead of cows and are receiving creep feed at a rate of 1kg for heifers and 1.5kg for bulls.
The 40 replacement hoggets are undergoing an extensive quarantine programme to significantly cut down on the risk of introducing disease into the flock.
Drafting resumed
Grass demand on the sheep side of things will also be helped in the short term by 41 lambs being drafted for slaughter on Thursday. Drafting was skipped for a week with ewe lambs a few kilos away from the drafting target at the last weighing. Shaun felt ram lambs would benefit from an extra week’s feeding to help build a better cover of flesh.
The lambs were weighed on Monday. Ram lambs continuing to make up the greatest percentage of the draft, with 27 lambs selected. The lambs are averaging 48.7kg, with the lightest lamb selected weighing 47kg, while there are four just exceeding the 50kg mark.
The level of concentrates offered to ram lambs was increased to 0.75kg for the last three weeks and Shaun says it is really starting to deliver benefits, both in terms of liveweight gain and fat cover. There are 30 ram lambs left in this group with about two thirds over 40kg and the remainder lighter lambs weighing back to 35kg which will take longer to finish.
The 14 ewe lambs selected weighed 45.7kg on average with Shaun balancing selection decisions on liveweight and fat cover. The lightest lamb selected was 43.8kg, with this lamb at a higher risk of slaughtering fat class 4 if carried over until next week.
Again, about two thirds of 70 remaining lambs are in the weight range of 38kg upwards and provided they stay on target a significant percentage of these will be drafted over the coming month. Ewe lambs are receiving a much lower daily supplementation rate of about 0.25kg with the aim of allowing lambs to develop a frame and hopefully increase the average carcase weight returned.
Table 1 details a breakdown of slaughter performance for the 138 lambs drafted up to this week. The slaughter performance of the 41 lambs processed on Thursday will be available in next week’s weekly farm update on www.farmersjournal.ie. When these lambs are included the total drafting rate stands at 64% or 179 lambs. Lambs are marketed through the Offaly Lamb Producer Group with Shaun happy with how lambs have performed so far.
There has been strong interest in the carcase conformation of lambs from the Mule cross ewes and it is evident from returns to date that lambs will grade mainly R with a small percentage of U grades. The small number of lambs returning a fat class of 4 are ewe lambs which killed overfat despite being drafted at a light carcase weight.
Ewe management
Table 1 also shows slaughter performance of the batch of cull ewes. These ewes were receiving preferential treatment and access to good-quality grass along with a small batch of ewes falling behind target condition. The breeding ewes have now recovered to a body condition score of above 3 on average and have been joined back with the main group of ewes to reduce the number of grazing groups and make way for a grazing group of replacement hoggets.
The 40 replacement hoggets are on the farm now for two weeks and are undergoing a quarantine programme.
On arrival, they were housed for 48 hours and received the prescription-only medicine wormer Zolvix and a moxidectin-based wormer to guard against the introduction of resistant worms. There were also two liver fluke treatments administered along with regular footbathing. The hoggets are already on a programme for clostridial disease and will receive vaccination for toxoplasmosis and enzootic abortion over the next 10 days.
The final treatment is plunge-dipping, which will take place in advance of breeding. Hoggets will be run as a separate batch and mated with the two remaining Charollais rams. The average price of the hoggets is €176.75.
The two Texel rams recently purchased.
Breeding programme
The breeding programme is being slightly tweaked with Texel rams run with mature ewes this year. There was a hogget ram and a ram lamb purchased at the Sheep Ireland sale in Tullamore with these costing €820 and €540, respectively.
Both rams are terminally bred with the ram lamb possessing a terminal value of €1.11, a days to slaughter figure of -7.66 and lamb survivability of 0.83%.
The hogget ram has a terminal value of €0.74, with a lower days to slaughter figure of -3.26 but a higher lamb survivability figure of 1.06. Both rams also underwent an extensive quarantine programme.
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