Farmer Focus: Breeding season has gone very well
Matthew-Brownlee © Steffan Hill Our breeding bulls are Stabiliser, Hereford and Charolais. These were added to our breeding herd on 15 May.
The bulls were removed 18 days ago (12 August) and we have only seen one cow showing to be in heat.
We plan to scan in the next fortnight. Our calving interval this year was 368 days and our ambition is to get this below 365.
Last year was the first year we used Stabiliser and Hereford bulls. The Stabiliser was mostly used on heifers due to their easy calving nature and we are pleased with the calves. We plan to keep a selection of the heifer calves as replacements.
The Hereford bull was used on some heifers, some mature cows and most of the calved heifers. Again we plan to take a pick of replacement heifers that are bred from our cows that have a good fertility history and consistently wean heavy calves.
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All calves are now eating creep feed ahead of weaning, which we offer in troughs alongside fresh grass. They are given access to grass ahead of the cows.
We feel this gives every calf the best chance of getting their 2kg/day opposed to the more traditional creep feeders where the biggest or greediest calves will push in first and get the most. It will be very interesting to compare weaning weights across the different breeds this year.
Our dairy-bred calf to beef enterprise saw another 52 reared calves arrive on farm last week. These calves were vaccinated on arrival and have been gradually let out to graze the second-cut aftermath. These calves will receive 3kg of meal and we hope they will be able to graze until the end of October.
The other batches of calves that arrived on farm in early spring and throughout the summer appear to have done very well and we look forward to assessing weight gain upon housing.
Some of these were grazed in a paddock system with fresh grass being offered every two to three days. It will be interesting to see what effect this had.
Matthew Brownlee farms 121ha along side his father in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. They run 100 Limousin cross suckler cows and buy in-store cattle to finish.