Farmer Focus: TB breakdown will see us busy rearing calves

We had a whole-herd TB test on 20 January and thought nothing of it until we read the results three days later.

We had 19 inconclusive reactors, destroying any chance of offloading calves at market for reportedly record prices. 

This means we must drastically increase our calf-rearing setup to rear beef calves.

See also: Severe mental health toll of bovine TB revealed in report

About the author

Eurig Jenkins

The Jenkins family are spring block-calvers near Lampeter, west Wales. Eurig oversees the management of 430 New Zealand Friesians, supplying First Milk. Stocking rates are up to 4.4 cows/ha in the summer. Calving lasts nine weeks and youngstock are wintered on deferred grazing.

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Luckily, we had already ordered a 60-calf, teat-trailed feeder with a mixing engine.

Now it’s arrived, I doubt the 420cc Honda is going to mix 1,000 litres of milk. I’ll report back on how it fares.

I would like to thank all involved in the business through 2024 for their efforts in producing another profitable year.

Even though cow performance was down, we managed to keep a tight grip on our costs.   

We fed 1.44t a cow of concentrates and yield sat at 5,708 litres on quite a challenging year.

Our aim was to keep to the tight cost structure of buying value-for-money items and trying to maximise output through attention to detail on whatever we did.

The dry cows were recently oral-drenched for fluke and worms with a product requiring a 60-hour milk withdrawal period, which has historically worked well.

A team-bonding job of changing liners and a complete parlour wash now see us ready for our calving season.

We have switched cows back to silage from hay in the hope they put a bit more condition on, as the team thinks they could be looking slightly better.

The yearling calves were weighed and averaged a disappointing 233kg. This is 17kg under target, so we have lifted their daily cake allocation to 1.2kg.

They seem to have grown frame but lack fat cover; however, I’m not too worried yet as we have acted on the information and done something about it.

I had a two-day visit to the Positive Farmers conference in Cork.

The break away was good for mental health and I felt good coming home.

I also appreciate what we have achieved over the years at home.

I managed to have a catch up with leading farmers and had a few pints in the bar with Will Evans (off the back page), who got a standing ovation when he spoke about mental health at last year’s conference.