Maurice Hearne is one of the few dedicated autumn-calvers in the programme, calving 85 cows from early August.

Moving forward he will look to pull calving towards July and move to 100 cows.

He has bred 44 heifers this year, having bought in 40 Limousin- and Simmental-cross heifers out of local British Friesian-based dairy herds.

“I think it’ll be healthier calving earlier on – we had trouble with pneumonia here in recent years. Calves will be stronger going into the shed.

“There were six bad cases last winter,” he said.

From now on Maurice will vaccinate calves at two to three weeks of age intra-nasally (Pi3, RSV and IBR), as opposed to doing so when the animals are coming into the house.

He has also removed some side sheets from his shed to encourage air movement through the building.

Maurice’s suckler calves are currently eating 1.25kg of a barley/soya/oats/molasses mixture and will be turned out for daily access to a redstart/rape/stubble turnip field beside the yard from the end of December.

Experiment

“This is a bit of an experiment in truth – it’s the first year I’ve tried it. It’ll be easier to pick up sick calves for a start.

“I’ll be turning them out in the morning from their indoor creep area and bringing them in around 4pm. They’ll still get a concentrate supplement but I’ll begin to pull it back as the grazing season approaches and remove it altogether once it starts.

“At the moment calves are indoors and creeping into deep straw-bedded pens at their leisure. While I’ve noticed a bit of coughing, there have been no cases of pneumonia yet – touch wood.”

Maurice also vaccinates his breeding animals against leptospirosis and IBR. Cows receive mineral boluses one month pre-calving and fertility-based boluses pre-breeding.

As well as buying in store bulls for finishing as a means of driving farm output, Maurice is taking in dairy-bred calves.

So far this year he has bought in 21 Simmental-cross calves for rearing, as well as three foster calves to put under cows that lost theirs.

Rearing calves

“The Simmental calves are doing well at the moment – they’re nearly reared and have done 0.65kg/day from when they came in.

“I’m giving them 5.5 litres of milk replacer daily, as well as a 23% crude protein, 0.95 UFL balancer concentrate mixed with my own barley,” he added.

In this week’s Irish Farmers Journal, we look in more detail at the diets Maurice feeds to his lactating cows, young calves and finishing bulls.

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