Grass growth has taken off on Tullamore Farm over the last seven days.

The farm grew 82kg DM/ha/day over the last seven days, which was just under double the demand of 43kg DM/ha/day.

Average farm cover (AFC) is sitting at just over 800kg DM/ha, with the grazing block currently stocked at 3.1LU/ha.

Things are changing very quickly and the farm has gone from being tight for grass to having too much grass.

Seeding paddocks

Some of the drier paddocks are going to seed at a very early stage, so it’s a real challenge to keep quality in the swards ahead of the grazing groups.

Shaun said: “We have taken out 12 acres this week and if the current weather continues, we will likely be taking out more strong paddocks for bales next week.

"We have another 12 acres down for hay and we hope to get this baled at the weekend. We buy two loads of hay every year and thought with the surplus that we have and the good weather we would try and save our own.”

We killed another 10 bull this week, which leaves 11 bulls left to kill in the next few weeks. This week’s bulls came in at 389kg carcase weight.

We had our highest recorded kill-out so far this week, with two bulls killing out at 63%. One was sired by Tomschoice Ironstone and the other was sired by Fiston.

The Fiston-sired bull was our best-priced bull this week, grading a U+2= and coming into €1,973.64 at €4.46/kg.

This week’s load of bulls averaged €1,699.66. Table 1 outlines the details of the details of the bulls killed this week.

Other jobs

The youngest group of calves on the farm got their clostridial booster shot this week.

Lambs were faecal sampled and they came back negative for stomach/gut worms, but positive for coccidiosis.

All lambs got a coccidiosis treatment and the youngest group of lambs got their clostridial vaccine along with a treatment for flies.