It’s been a super start to the year weather-wise on Tullamore Farm, with a drier than normal month of January.

Paddocks are in super shape, with a lot of the drier grazed-out paddocks ready for slurry. Slurry application has been delayed by a few weeks to try to capitalise on the full value of the slurry.

No fertiliser has been spread on the farm to date, with plans to spread urea at the rate of half a bag/acre across some of the medium covers within the next two weeks. Urea has been purchased for the farm at €900/t.

The opening cover for the farm is 626kg/DM/Ha. Farm manager Shaun Diver said: “We are happy enough with that cover."

“Our drier, sheltered paddocks have good covers, so we will head our lighter heifers and earlier-calved cows and calves.

"Ideally, you would be opening higher, but you have to remember [that] we have grazed a lot of the farm with sheep over the winter, so you can’t have it at both ends,” said Shaun.

Calving has commenced on the farm, with two cows calved this week. Calving has started a little earlier than expected. More new arrivals are expected this week.

You can tune into our 'Calving the cow and care of the calf' webinar on Wednesday night at 8pm on www.farmersjournal.ie where we talk to Shaun Diver about preparing to calve on Tullamore Farm.

Tullamore Farm will complete a grass cover every Friday morning for the rest of 2022 and you can check out our dedicated grass update on www.farmersjournal.ie at 6pm every Friday.