Signpost: Spring calving and making the first preparations for silage in Youghal
Donnchadh and Eamon McCarthy tagging a calf on their farm at Carrigeen, Youghal, Co. Waterford. Photo: Patrick Browne
We are running a suckling to beef enterprise, split into spring (60%) and autumn (40%) calving 55 suckler cows.
The males are finished as under 16-month bull beef. Some of the heifers are kept for breeding, while those which are not are finished at 18-20 months.
The calving season began on February 13, and by the first week of March, 18 cows had calved. Of the first 18 calves born, 16 were heifers and two were bulls. These calves were all from AI sires mainly by LM6172, SA4604 and SI2152.
The calves from these sires are mainly bred for their maternal characteristics. High terminal index AI-bred Charolais sires are used more widely in the latter half of the calving. 55% of the cows had calved by March 1, which was also our median calving date. The last cow is due to calve on March 30.
The breeding season will commence on May 1 and bulls have now been selected for both replacement and terminal sires. Calving has gone well so far with no difficult calvings recorded to date. Bulls are matched with cows depending on their previous calving history.
Following birth, all calves are encouraged to suckle the cow for colostrum within the first two hours of birth, and if for any reason a calf cannot stand to suckle the cow, the calf is assisted in order to maximise its intake of colostrum within two hours of birth.
We keep the calves with their mothers for a number of days in order to create a good calf cow bond and once weather and land conditions are good the cows and calves are left out to grass.
The maiden heifers were turned out to grass in early February. The heifers were housed during a wet spell in February but have been out since weather has improved. We got approximately 95mm of rain for the month of February this year compared to 74mm for the same period last year.
The weather forecast looks like we will get dry, colder weather for early March. The attention will now turn to closing up fields that were grazed and fertilising these fields for a crop of silage in mid May.
The silage ground will receive 2,500 gallons of cattle slurry with a trailing shoe or dribble bar and will be balanced accordingly with protected urea compound containing potash and sulphur.
Our 2024 spring born bulls were weighed on March 9 and averaged 460kg with an average daily gain of 1.64kg/day since the last weight recording on January 3.
The heaviest of the bulls weighed 557kg and were gaining over 2kg/day. The bulls are behind last year’s lot, however, this can be explained by the poorer summer grass growing year and later spring of 2024 and the outbreak of viral pneumonia at housing.
All the bulls over 500kg have settled onto their ad lib diet at this stage and the plan is to still have these animals ready for the factory as under 16-month bull beef.
- Eamon and his son Donnchadh are farming in Carrigeen, Glendine, Youghal, Co Waterford and are part of the Teagasc Future Beef programme with the Signpost programme. Their Signpost advisor is James Mullane.
