Dairy beef calves: This week’s Focus supplement is on calves and calf rearing. Some farmers are contemplating a system switch to dairy calf to beef, but margins need to be looked at closely.

While dairy-cross calves are cheap to get into, they can be expensive to bring to finish. Margins are tight and efficiency levels need to be high. Do the sums before purchase and see what you can afford to pay for a calf.

Current calf prices seem high for a beef farmer to make any money. Early calf sales in the south have started very strong, with reports of AAX and HEX heifer calves making in excess of €300/head at some marts, with farmer buyers in abundance (see martwatch pages 62-64)

While prices in early January are always high, it is impossible to say where the price of calves will average this year.

Before you commit, it is vital that you do a budget. While a calf-to-beef system is relatively cheap to get into, most systems require about €750 to €900 in working capital per head from purchase to slaughter, so budget carefully.

Work out how much you can afford to pay for a calf and if they are too expensive, hold off buying. As more and more calves come out, prices will fall, so don’t panic buy.

Night feeding: Feeding cows late in the evening has been shown to increase the number of daytime calvings on some farms. This can be a big help in reducing night calvings when help is scarce.

The thinking is that the animal spends a few hours eating, then ruminating, so is too consumed with digesting the silage to start the calving process.

To work best the cow needs to be fed her daily allowance of silage in the late evening. Farms operating this successfully feed at night for three to four weeks pre-calving.

Mineral supplementation pre-calving: All in-calf spring-calving cows should be supplemented with minerals for six to eight weeks prior to calving.

Every year I hear of farms which encounter high mortality in calves or retained placentas and when looked into, it points to mineral deficiencies. Silage can be analysed for minerals and a specific mineral make-up, but most minerals that are available to buy will cover a suckler cow’s needs. Keep an eye on price but don’t be penny wise and pound foolish and make sure it has good levels of essential trace elements such as copper, selenium, cobalt and iodine.

Calcium should be at 0% in a pre-calving mineral. Where there have been problems on the farm in the past, get the vet to take some blood samples from cows pre-calving to determine mineral profile and make changes to the feeding programme based on these results.

If feeding powdered mineral on top of silage, feed twice daily and make sure there is adequate space for each cow to eat at the same time.

It is recommended to have 0.5 - 0.66m (1.5 - 2.0 ft) feeding space per cow. At a cost of €.10-€0.12/cow/day, it’s money well spent.