Once the politicians left the farm on Monday evening, calving started, with four cows calved in the last four days.

Unfortunately, one of the calves was lost at calving. It was a difficult presentation and the calf didn’t put up much of a fight. The cow was young and had a big supply of milk, so we bought a Limousin heifer calf for €210 and the adoption seems to be working ok.

This is a decision that is made when a calf is lost. If it’s a young cow and she has milk and is quiet, we foster. If it’s an old cow, she is culled. Risk

There is a risk with buying in a disease issue, but we know the source of the calf. It’s the same farm where we source the colostrum from and we have the same vet, which helps.

There are 97 cows to calve over the next 11 weeks. Another cow that aborted three weeks ago is fine. Initial blood results have come back clear, with no further action needed. This cow has been earmarked for culling.

Cows close to calving are currently housed on peat and they move to straw as they get close to calve or have calved.

2019 bulls

Spring 2019 bulls were weighed on 17 January and weighed 468kg, which is ahead of last year’s weight at this stage.

Their average daily gain since birth is 1.35kg/day and they are on target to be over 500kg at 12 months of age.

The heaviest bull in the batch is a Biouvac-sired February-born calf out of a Limousin-cross cow weighing 560kg. He has put on 1.52kg/day since birth.

Bulls are now consuming 6kg of concentrates along with silage. The plan is to increase this further in the next two to three weeks and go ad-lib from early March onwards. It’s likely we will have bulls ready to kill this year at 15 months.

Sheep

Shaun Diver and Colm Grogan have been busy kitting out our sheep sheds this week ahead of ewes being housed.

We purchased some sheep barriers to increase the ewe housing capacity in the round roof sheds on the farm. Some timber gates were also installed to aid in feeding.

One-hundred-and-sixty ewes are now housed and all that is left outdoors is the single-carrying ewes and the ewe lambs.

Grass

Farm cover is low at 500kg DM/ha, but this includes all the fields that ewes have grazed over the past few months. This land is very wet and wouldn’t have been able to be grazed early anyway.

We have covers of over 1,300kg/DM/Ha on the outfarm in Cloonagh. These fields will be for cows and calves once weather permits turnout.

There are also good covers on the demo field (1,000kg to 1,200kg DM/ha), which is being kept for weanling heifers. Fifteen weanling heifers will be turned out next week, once storm Ciara passes, and urea is also booked to be spread across 50 acres next week. This will be spread at the rate of ½ bag/acre.

Pick up a copy of next week's Irish Farmers Journal where we will be analysing the 2019-born Tullamore Farm bull performance, including looking at weight gains by sire type and cow type.