Getting yearling cattle back to grass on a dairy-calf-to-beef farm comes as a great relief, as it frees up more time to dedicate to rearing this year’s crop of calves.

However, we must remember that the yearlings are still a high priority group on the farm.

Performance at grass for the first six to eight weeks post-turnout is often the greatest of the year. If we don’t ensure that these animals are well looked after during this period, it can have a seriously detrimental effect on the carcase weight achieved come slaughter.

Ideally, these cattle will have been weighed pre-turnout. It is a good idea to weigh cattle again six to eight weeks post-turnout to see how well they have performed.

Little and often

Smaller-sized paddocks will work better in the coming weeks to maximise liveweight gain and ensure you achieve a decent clean-out of paddocks in the first rotation.

Grass supplies are quite good across the country and with the temperatures this week increasing significantly, grass growth should kick on in the coming days.

Yearlings are going to be in the region of 320kg to 360kg liveweight at turnout, so their demand for grass is not all that great.

Grass supplies are quite good across the country and with the temperatures this week increasing significantly, grass growth should kick on in the coming days.

This is why it is important to keep this group of stock moving into fresh grass every two to three days. Any longer and it will become tramped into the ground. This can be especially true after a day’s rain when the grass will be soiled and dirty.

If this happens, don’t be afraid to move stock on to the next paddock and keep fresh grass under their heads – you can always come back again and clean out a paddock after it has had a couple of showers of rain to clean it up.

Know your endpoint

Have a plan in your head in terms of the slaughter date for stock. Even at this early stage, it will help you to keep focused on the performance of stock.

Where cattle are to be finished from grass, be ready to make the call on when you are going to introduce concentrate feeding later in the summer.

Going in with a kilo or two of concentrate in the month of August might be a lot more cost-effective if it means getting stock finished from grass compared with having to rehouse stock for finishing in November.