As the dust settles in Tullamore after the National Ploughing Championships, the work still continues on Tullamore Farm. Farm manager Shaun Diver outlines what is happening on the farm.

Grass

Growth for the last seven days has been impressive at 68kg DM/ha/day, well above average for this time of year. It has been a constant struggle to increase farm cover over the last month as the farm found itself with a lot of groups of stock to carry. To help build covers, we have begun spreading fertiliser, bunching up stock groups and housing some stock.

"Ten days ago the dairy X heifers were housed. They are now on 6kg/head/day of concentrates and good-quality baled silage. The cover has shot up since we did that. It’s now at 760kg DM/ha,” says Shaun.

Determining silage quality will be a critical factor on all farms this year as many look to save fodder where possible. This week, silage samples were taken on the farm.

Weaning

Weaning has commenced on the farm this week also – mainly in another bid to build grass covers.

On Tuesday 14 cows were weaned and it is hoped another 10 will be weaned on Thursday. Cows being weaned are ones that either calved early this year, ones that calved as heifers or ones that are beginning to lose some body condition.

Weaning is carried out by pulling a group of cows away from the main group of cows and calves. Calves are simply left out with their comrades and according to Sean, “they are quite settled, particularly because they have been on creep feeding for the last while”.

Cows are put out to a bare paddock beside the yard to dry off.

On Thursday, calves will also get another worm dose, this time an Albendozol white drench, and they will be weighed.

Breeding

On the sheep side, ewes have now been put out to lush grass for flushing ahead of the breeding season. It is planned to start breeding on 24 October. There are 190 ewes for breeding; 135 mature ewes and 55 replacements. All have received a fluke does, a worm dose, a foot bathing and a mineral bolus so far this autumn.

Unfortunately, this week a sheep was found dead on her back.

Lambs are continually being drafted for slaughter. Last week 42 lambs were sold and another draft of 20 will be taken out before the weekend. When these go, there will only be 32 ewe lambs and seven ram lambs left and it is hoped the majority of these will be slaughtered in the next three weeks.

Redstart

Ten acres of grass were wrapped earlier this week which yielded 42 bales. This was a poorer yield than expected. These bales were placed in the field of redstart to allow for ease of management when strip grazing the crop this winter. The redstart is performing well and is currently at knee-height.