Watch: Tullamore Farm breeding heifer sale

Preparations are in full swing for next week’s first sale of heifers in Tullamore mart on Monday 7 May at 4pm. Forty-eight heifers have been selected for the sale based on visual appearance, replacement index and weight for age.

Forty-three of the heifers catalogued were bred on Tullamore Farm last year and are predominantly Limousin X bred from the suckler herd on Tullamore Farm. Five Hereford X dairy replacements have also been included in the sale.

Lot No 8 in the sale is a March 2017-born heifer with a replacement index of €127 (five stars).

The heifers are predominantly four- and five-star with an average replacement index of €108 (five stars) putting the group of heifers in the top 20% of heifers in the country in terms of replacement index. The heifers are also have an average daughter milk figure of +8.3kg (five stars) which puts the group in the top 10% of the country in terms of commercial heifer daughter milk. Heifers will have weight history displayed on the night and a full vaccination history.

All heifers have received two shots of both the BVD vaccine and the leptospirosis vaccine. All heifers have also been scanned not in-calf and suitable for breeding. During the winter period, heifers received a lot of handling and have become very quiet as a result. Part of the farm plan for Tullamore is to have an annual sale of breeding heifers and with the farm moving more towards AI, it is hoped that the sale will become a good source of top-quality heifers with high genetic indexes.

Download a copy of the catalogue here.

Growth has remained good at 48kg/DM/ha over the past week. Average farm cover is 727kg/DM/ha and farm demand is 28kg/DM/Ha/day.

Fifteen more heifers were turned out this week to join the dairy beef heifers. These heifers were the lighter suckler-bred heifers who did not hit target weights for breeding and will be finished by the end of the year. Turning out these heifers will raise demand further and make managing grass easier.

Grazing

At the moment, the farm is growing more than it needs and paddocks will be coming out for silage in the next two weeks if current growth continues. One bag/acre of 18:6:12 is being spread after grazings on this round. This will help to build the low K soil indexes on the farm.

The 12 acres where the kale was grazed during the winter was ploughed this week and it is hoped to get grass seed in over the weekend. This will also get three bags of 0:7:30 at seeding time. Lime was applied last year when kale was being planted and soil pH is good at 6.5. A further 7ac has been sprayed off, with the possibility of putting in a red clover mix for silage. Lot No 17 is a black Limousin heifer with a replacement index of €106 (five stars).

On the animal health, calves were routinely faecal-sampled two weeks ago for worms and coccidiosis and they came back positive for the parasite giardia. Advised treatment was five days’ fenbendazole dosing to all calves which added a lot to the workload last week.

There have also been issues with tetany in ewes. One group of ewes grazing paddocks that got slurry in early spring seem to be more prone to it than other groups on the farm, with three cases so far. Meal has been reintroduced to this group to prevent any further cases.

Breeding was due to start on 1 May in cows but with cows showing good heats last week, AI started on 27 April. By Tuesday 1 May there were 19 cows inseminated.

Heifer heats have been a little slower, with just two inseminated over the past week. Any heifer not inseminated over the past week will get 2cc estrumate and inseminated to standing heats.

The farm is using the new Moocall HEAT device where the vasectomised bulls have a collar and each cow has a tag for picking up heats. Heat activity is then texted to the manager’s phone.

Farm manager Shaun Diver says so far he is finding the system really useful. Cows also have scratch cards applied as a further tool to aid heat detection. Cows continue to be fed 1kg/meal daily as an aid to prevent tetany and also to make it easier to get cows in for AI. Under-16-month bulls are on ad-lib meal and straw as a roughage source. They are due to be weighed early next week. Some of the Aberdeen-Angus bulls are coming close to slaughter and some will be fit to go at 14-15 months, albeit at lower carcase weights.