After a slow start, the calving pens are starting to fill up on Tullamore Farm, with six cows calving over the last week, five of which were unassisted. One calf needed assistance due to a mal-presentation. Of the six, five are heifers with one bull.

Early-born heifers are always a bonus as there is a better chance of them hitting target weights at breeding and calving in a two-year-old calving system.

Three of the calved cows have been turned out to a sheltered paddock close to the yard.

Grass

Average farm cover is currently 1,243 kg/dm/Ha. This is high and the challenge will be to get heavy covers grazed in time to kick start growth. Heaviest covers are at 2,200kg/DM/Ha.

Growth was recorded as 11kg/DM/Ha over the past week, with demand currently at 7kg/dm/Ha/day.

As only six cows have calved and ewes are not due to lamb until 20 March, demand won’t really lift for another few weeks.

With that in mind, heifers were taken off redstart this week and turned out to grass to graze the heavier covers. Some April-calving cows have been put on to the redstart to finish it off – there is about two weeks grazing left on it.

The weanling heifers have settled well on the grass and hopefully will be able to stay out. With just heifers grazing, it will be difficult to hit the target of having 50% of the farm grazed by 7 March.

Urea

Urea was spread across half of the farm at a rate of 23 units/acre.

Sheep

Triplet ewes have started meal feeding and currently on .25/kg/day. Twins will be housed this week and start on .2kg/day of meal.