It’s been a super grass year on many farms around the country and autumn-calving herds are reporting a successful calving season and are now gearing up for the breeding season.

A successful breeding season is central to streamlining many other tasks on the farm. Poor fertility will also have a huge effect on profitability with lower sales in 2020 and beyond on beef farms.

Management practices such as grassland management, vaccinations, weighing, feeding and weaning can all become very complicated when dealing with a spread-out age pattern of calves. That’s why the next few weeks are critical for success in autumn-calving herds. Getting body condition score correct is a basic principle that many forget about managing in autumn-calving herds.

Silage quality needs to be very high for suckler cows to gain condition before breeding and, in many cases meal will have to be fed to make sure too much condition isn’t lost during this critical time.

Kieran Mailey outlines his 10 tips to get the most out of AI during the breeding period for autumn-calving herds. One of the advantages of autumn-calving herds is the ability to use AI when cows are housed. AI offers a real opportunity to use highly reliable, high replacement index bulls on the suckler herd to breed replacements. We profile the top 25 beef AI sires on the replacement index and the terminal index.

Matthew Halpin outlines some important points to consider when picking replacement heifers this autumn. The beef industry has grappled with two-year-old calving for years and only 23% of Irish farms had heifers calving between 22 and 26 months in 2018. It’s a key driver for farm profitability yet farmers continue to ignore it.

Finally, Aidan Brennan outlines some key messages for a successful breeding season for winter milking herds.