Grass

There has been plenty of rain this week on Tullamore Farm and this has driven on grass growth with strong growth of 50kg DM/ha/day recorded again this week.

Demand is currently steady at 30kg DM/ha/day, so it should be easy to build days in the next few weeks.

There are currently 28 days ahead of stock and the target is to get to 30 days by 1 September.

One bag of nitrogen/acre is going out at the weekend across a number of paddocks in a bid to further build grass cover. Average farm cover is currently at 825kg DM/ha.

Winter plans

We are currently weighing up the options for wintering all animals.

Sheep won’t be housed until close to Christmas, so the only issue we have is with weanling heifers.

Weanling heifers have been wintered on kale and rape for the past two years.

However, with all the farm reseeded at this stage, this option isn’t available to us this year.

We are looking at either renting a shed close by, and providing fodder, renting a shed far away and pay for feed or purchase a forge crop and graze in situ.

Given the performance of the heifers on kale and rape over the past two years, our preference would be to find a field of kale or rape somewhere that is available to rent.

Scanning

Scanning of cows and heifers took place on Thursday this week.

Heifers scanned well. However, synchronising didn’t work well, with a conception rate of just over 30% being achieved to fixed-time AI.

Heifers were in good condition, had received a bolus for minerals and all vaccinations were up to date, so it’s hard to explain what the reason was.

The overall pregnancy rate was 87.5%, with five heifers out of 40 not in-calf after just under 10 weeks of breeding.

Cows were a similar story, with 11 empties out of a potential 77 cows to go in-calf.

We would have been aiming for a lower figure here.

The decision was taken to stick with the 10-week breeding window to try to pull our mean calving date back from mid-March to late February or early March.

It means the later-calving cows are finding it harder to go back in-calf within the target window.

The empty rate for the herd was just over 13%, which is above our target of 5% to 8% empty.

These cows have been separated and will start meal feeding at grass, along with calves to be weaned early and slaughtered.

We may buy in some in-calf heifers in their place over the winter months.

Sheep

Lambs continue to be drafted, with a further 31 lambs drafted this week at an average carcase weight of 20.67kg at an average price of €99.54.