Average farm cover continues to rise on Tullamore Farm, with demand a lot lower than current grass growth level on the farm.

Average farm cover is sitting at 760kg/DM/ha, which is slow to build. Ideally, farm cover would be over 1,000kg by now.

Housing dairy heifers and cull cows has helped but it needs to increase further to hit closing targets while keeping grass in front of ewes.

Growth is down on the previous week but is still ahead of the same week last year.

Weaning continues, with five cows being drafted out of each group on Mondays and Thursdays of each week. This is working well, with no major issues or stress on cows and calves.

Creep-feeding

Calves have been creep-fed and creep-grazed since midsummer, when drought conditions hit the farm.

Dairy-cross heifers are being fed 6kg of finishing ration and ad-lib first-cut silage. This silage was analysed last week and came in at 72DMD, 26% dry matter and 12% protein.

These heifers will be drafted for slaughter in the coming weeks. Cull cows were also housed and are being built up gradually to high levels of meal. The target is to have these finished before the main herd is housed.

The Aberdeen Angus stock bull on the farm had to be slaughtered last week due to a prolapse in the penal area. He killed out a U+,3= with a 660kg carcase weight at 32 months. The price came into €1,850 at €2.80/kg.

Priority

Ewes continue to remain priority in terms of grazing, with rams due to go out with 190 breeding sheep on 24 October. Lambs continue to be drafted and 20 lambs were slaughtered last week.

There are now 32 ewe lambs and seven ram lambs left to be killed.

Jobs for this week include fixing some gates and drinkers in sheds in advance of housing, continue weaning and faecal-sample the beef heifers.