At last week’s BETTER Farm NI farm walk, Barry Carty outlined the changes he has made to his farming system since joining the programme in early 2017.

Across the 10 farms involved in the programme, Barry has the greatest challenge in terms of land type.

The farm extends to 119ha, of which 20ha is common grazing.

Ground is typically LFA or SDA in nature, with seven different grazing blocks carrying 60 cows, split between 20 spring and 40 autumn-calving animals.

Outlined below are some of the changes to the farming system which were discussed.

1 Focusing on cow type and purchasing replacements

Cow type is a hardy, functional animal that can cope with grazing rough pasture and a six- to seven-month housing period.

Cows that exhibit extreme conformation will not survive in the system, as they will lose body condition grazing upland areas.

The herd currently consists of a mix of Limousin, Simmental, Salers and Hereford-cross animals.

Autumn calving started in early August, with 40 cows expected to calve in nine weeks. Cows are calving to the Charolais sire Fiston.

Cow size is something Barry takes into consideration when selecting replacements, and this is being controlled by culling heavier animals which are less suited to the system.

They are then replaced with in-calf heifers.

In 2018, spring-calving cows averaged 611kg and weaned calves which were approximately 39% to 42% of mature cow weight.

Autumn cows are a similar weight and weaned calves at 45% to 48% of body weight.

To keep the system as simple as possible, all replacement heifers are now purchased as in-calf heifers.

Replacements are purchased from known farms, reducing the risks of disease entering the herd.

Buying in-calf heifers means Barry can focus on using terminal sires on all cows at breeding time.

This allows him to produce a greater number of high-value weanlings for sale each year.

2 Producing high-value weanlings/stores

All cows on the farm are now bred to AI. Barry does all his own insemination work, and to maximise suckler output all cows are served to proven terminal sires.

Charolais bulls are used to produce high-value weanlings for the live trade.

Fiston is the predominant sire choice in recent years and is a five-star animal for terminal traits.

“Fiston is very easy to calve, with 95% of cows requiring zero assistance at calving.

"His calves are worth £100/head more when selling compared with the calves we sold from our stock bull,” said Barry.

Calves are now sold as strong weanlings, or yearling stores. Previously, all calves were sold as light weanlings straight off the cow.

The 2018 spring-born calves were sold at just over 13 months old back in February. Average sale price was £1,024, with steers averaging 445kg liveweight and heifers weighing 379kg. Back in 2016 calves were little more than 350kg, with heifers averaging 275kg.

This year’s spring-born calves have now been weaned and are 30kg heavier than last year, averaging 310kg. These calves will be wintered and sold next February.

3 Breeding indoors

As the farm is heavily fragmented, breeding cows at grass is not an option as there are too many cow groups.

Therefore, all cows are bred indoors and this makes it much easier to facilitate the use of AI within the herd.

Weather-depending, autumn cows are housed around two weeks before the start of the breeding period, which normally starts on 25 October and lasts for nine weeks.

Once housed, cows are treated for fluke and worms, and vaccinated for BVD and Lepto.

Calves are vaccinated for pneumonia and IBR. Cows are fed high-quality silage along with 1.5kg/day concentrate and minerals to maintain milk production and bring them back into heat. Cows are served to natural heats.

“I watch cows for heat activity using cameras as well as tail paint and scratch cards.

"Calves are only allowed to suckle cows twice per day once they are housed. I lock the calves in the creep area, letting them in to suck cows morning and night. This has been a big help in getting cows bred again,” said Barry.

Once settled in-calf, concentrates are removed from the diet and cows are fed silage-only, plus powdered minerals.

Spring-calving cows follow a similar routine, with weaning completed by September and cows placed on a maintenance diet until calving.

Herd fertility is good in both the spring and autumn cows, with 70% of breeding females holding to first service.

Approximately 1.5 straws per cow are used to inseminate the entire herd, with 92% of cows served last year scanned in-calf again.

4 Land improvement and silage

Barry has invested heavily in improving 34ha of grazing and silage ground.

Lime is regularly applied at a rate of 0.7t/ac, including prior to reseeding.

Heavier applications of 2t/ac have been applied in the past, but made ground extremely soft and more prone to poaching.

Additional drainage was installed on silage ground. Drains were dug at 6m spacing, with five lorry-loads of stone used per acre.

Grass seed is broadcast after burning off old swards, rather than ploughing.

“Reseeded ground is performing well, but needs careful managing. I am using fertilisers with high potash (K) levels to build soil fertility, especially on silage ground.

“First-cut silage got three bags/acre of 22-2-14 plus sulphur and 25-5-5 used for the second cut. Grazing paddocks got three bags/acre of 20-10-10 this year. Rough ground gets zero fertiliser.

“The first round of fertiliser was 0.75 bags/acre of urea applied in March. There was snow after it was spread, but it kickstarted grass growth and there was a great cover of grass by April.

“Silage fertiliser was applied in early April and silage was mowed on 21 May, then wilted for 24 hours before baling.

“Second cut was made on 14 July. This gave a good opportunity to build grass covers on the silage ground next to the main yard for autumn-calving cows in August.

“Cows calve from August onwards and are slipped out to silage ground in small groups. Despite the early cutting dates, we have an extra 200 silage bales harvested from the same area as last year.

“We also managed to harvest 40 bales of silage from excess grass on the grazing paddocks,” said Barry.

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