Watch: Autumn management in Newford Farm

Management practices at Newford Farm have now firmly turned to building autumn grass supplies and getting on course to meet the autumn rotation planner. While grass growth rates have been positive, averaging 64kg DM/ha and 62kg DM/ha respectively in the last two weeks, farm manager Matthew Murphy explains high volumes of rainfall is making it more difficult to build and manage covers.

“Rainfall levels have been relatively high in recent weeks and over 30mm of rain falling over the weekend and the start of this week hasn’t helped,” he said.

“Grass dry matter has reduced significantly and cows and calves are moving through covers faster than we would like at this stage of the year. Ground conditions are also starting to get tricky on heavier areas of the farm, meaning some batches of stock are having to be moved every 24 hours without fully grazing out paddocks, which is losing half a day to a day in places.”

That said, Teagasc’s Adam Woods explains that if high rainfall levels decline and ground holds up, the farm should be on course to meet targets.

Figure 1 shows the grass wedge for the farm at the start of this week. The farm is still on target with the autumn rotation planner, with 27 days grazing ahead and building, with growth running ahead of demand (47kg DM/ha versus growth of 64kg DM/ha this week) and should be OK once weather and utilisation improves.

One issue at present is that the best grass supplies are located on the Raheen Woods block, with the highest demand present on the main block where 88 cows and their calves are grazing. This is also the wettest area for grazing at present, with ground conditions deteriorating in recent days.

The plan at this stage is to move a batch of cows and calves from the main block to Raheen Woods, where there are already 46 store cattle grazing that are unlikely to be finished off grass. This is also a drier block of ground and should provide a two- to three-week reprieve to the main block and help get this area back on track.

Autumn rotation planner

Adam explains the target under the autumn rotation planner is to have one third of the farm (about 18.5ha) grazed off and closed by 1 October, a further third by 25 October and the remaining area grazed and closed by 10 November.

Achieving these targets is critical this year, as with in the region of 80 cows and heifers due to calve between the first week of February and 1 March, grass demand will increase rapidly next spring.

Grass demand is rising in line with a higher intake of aging suckling calves, rising slowly from 45kg to 47kg in the last week. On the opposite side, demand will be reduced in the coming weeks by drafting 2015-born steers and heifers.

A batch of 45 forward cattle was grouped four weeks ago on a combination of weight and fat cover, with concentrate supplementation introduced initially at 2kg/head.

This has gradually been increased to 5kg/head in line with grass quality reducing and is also serving to reduce grass demand. The first batch of cattle is being selected for slaughter this week, with drafting set to continue over the next two months. Reducing the group size should also hopefully ease pressure with poor ground conditions, particularly around feeding troughs.

The focus in drafting cattle is to try to achieve the best balance in getting the highest percentage of cattle finished off grass to minimise finishing costs and still meet factory specifications and optimise output.

The criteria set for drafting cattle is a minimum carcase weight of 280kg and fat class of 3. Meeting the fat cover is not a problem, with Angus-cross cattle fleshing up easily, but meeting the minimum carcase weight is trickier in younger animals taking a lot of genetics from a smaller-framed cow.

Going on previous experience, the kill-out percentage used in calculating slaughter weights is 53.5% for heifers and 54% for steers.

Summer performance

Table 1 details animal performance of 2016-born progeny. Bull calves are benefitting from a high milk yield in cows, achieving a liveweight gain of 1.32kg from birth to the last weighing on 26 July.

Heifer calves were weighed more recently on 16 August and have maintained good steady performance, averaging 223kg and 1.20kg liveweight gain since birth. Replacement heifer calves are also on target, weighing 140.5kg on 29 June and achieving an average performance of 0.76kg daily live eight gain since birth.

As detailed in Table 2, store bullocks and heifers have performed relatively well since turnout this spring, but as has been the case on many farms in July and the start of August, performance has been lower than expected.

It should be noted when looking at weights to look at longer term differences, with short-term weighing less accurate.

In-calf heifers that are being contract-reared are well on target, weighing an average of 448kg at the end of June and these animals will be well within the range of hitting 90% of mature weight at calving. These heifers were turned out on 23 February and are gaining close to 1kg liveweight daily.

All stock is being weighed this week and this information will also be used to form decisions if a percentage of the 46 cattle initially grouped for further grazing can be segregated and pushed on for finishing off grass.

Table 3 details a breakdown of the weight and condition by cow age in the herd. First-calvers will be monitored closely in the coming weeks and may be weaned first, along with the oldest calves, if body condition is seen to be an issue.

Excellent breeding performance

Breeding performance has been a very bright aspect of the farming year. Breeding started at the end of April, with over 70 cows or 75% of the 88 cows put forward for breeding served in the first three weeks. This good start held with 84 cows served by 10 June.

Scanning in the herd shows that there are about 80 cows due to calve between 5 February and 5 March, making for a busy calving next spring. Conception rates to AI were excellent, with only nine cows picked up and served by stock bulls after six weeks of AI until breeding ceased at 10 weeks.

Breeding performance was also excellent in heifers, with 23 out of 25 heifers scanned in-calf. Measures will be put in place over the winter months to have emergency housing available in storage sheds to deal with such a concentrated calving spread should weather not allow normal turn-out.

Health treatments

Bull calves were castrated by burdizzo in the first week of August, with no setback or issues reported by Matthew.

The only health concern in recent weeks was coughing in calves and heifers, although regular faecal egg counts were not showing up the presence of a heavy work burden.

Following consultation with the farm’s vet, Teagasc beef specialists and the management team, a decision was taken to treat for lungworm, with faecal egg counts not viewed as a fully accurate measure of its presence.

2016-born progeny and store cattle a long way from finishing were treated with an avermectin-based pour-on, while forward cattle receiving supplementation received a drench with a shorter withdrawal period. Replacement heifers received injectable treatment also with an avermectin-based product.

2016-born calves will also receive their booster pneumonia vaccine at the start of October, allowing two weeks’ immunity to develop before weaning begins in the middle of October.

Newford Farm was established by Dawn Meats and Teagasc. The 100-cow suckler-to-beef demonstration herd is being run on 55.8ha of lands previously farmed by Teagasc in Newford, Athenry. There are a number of objectives in the project that is driven by Dawn Meats, Teagasc and the Irish Farmers Journal, and also has backing from McDonald’s. Farm manager Matthew Murphy is the man charged with the day-to-day running of the herd.

The overriding aim is to generate a high profit from a grass-based suckler-to-steer and heifer-beef production system. There is also a focus on quantifying the labour required to operate a 100-cow unit, while also developing benchmarks and production targets for a herd utilising a breeding policy and cow type that differs from the majority of Irish suckler enterprises.