Grass has continued to grow, albeit at a lower rate over the past seven days. The farm grew 21kg DM/ha over the past week. Demand has dropped to 12kg DM/ha. Farm cover is running at 610kg DM/ha.

There is currently 63% (50.6Ha) of the farm closed and paddocks closed in early October have covers of 1,000-1,200kg DM at the moment. The plan is to have all cattle housed by 22 November.

The weanling bulls were housed on Friday 27 October and are being fed 3kg of a 16% protein nut that was being fed at grass. They will move on to a barley, soya hulls, maize meal and soya bean meal mix in the next week. They are also being fed the highest-quality silage at 78DMD. Dung has been quite loose since housing so we are feeding some hay to settle them down.

Cows on kale

The 51 cows started to graze kale on Friday also. Their tails were clipped and each cow received two mineral boluses. They have access to silage bales as they graze the kale. The dry few days has helped settle them into grazing and they seem very happy on it. The fence is being moved daily.

Weanling heifers will continue to graze off paddocks for the next two weeks and are getting 2kg/head/day at grass. Plans for next week include making some changes to a shed that needs more ventilation. Sheeting will be taken down off the side and replaced with spaced boarding.

Rams have gone out with the ewes today, Thursday 2 November.

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Full coverage: Tullamore Farm