Teagasc Future Beef farm update

By Charlie Devaney,

Beef Advisor,

Teagasc Castlerea.

Last week Future Beef Advisor Gabriel Trayers and I caught up with Shane Keaveney for an interview with him to get an update on his progress in the Teagasc Future Beef Programme. 

I scanned the 12 replacement heifers on July 14th and 10 are in calf. That is 83% in calf so I happy enough with the results. I used all AI and sexed semen was used on 7 heifers.  9 sexed semen straws were used on the 7 as 2 repeated and the scanning revealed that 6 out of this  7 are in calf , so I am very happy with that. If they all keep, I am guaranteed at least 6 heifers from sexed semen trial which is an adequate number for my herd size.  The breeding of these heifers started on May 6th and finished on June 11th so the calving will be nice and compact next year.

As I am now using a terminal Charolais bull on my herd, I think using sexed semen is an option to breed replacements from a herd of my size.  Buying a replacement bull could not be justified and sourcing suitable heifers at the marts that will calve at 2 years of age is also a challenge.  With more choice of sexed semen bulls coming on stream -it’s an option that I will consider again next year. The 2 empty heifers were weighed and they averaged 450kgs.  These have been removed and I have put them with the remaining 10 store heifers that I plan to either slaughter at the end year or just sell off grass. To finish off on the breeding side, the CH bull was removed on July 15th from the main herd. The cows will be scanned in September but it looks like that I wouldn’t need all of the 10 replacements – so I will consider selling some of these in-calf heifers later on.

We came back from our family holiday on July 12th. It is nice to get away but it also great to get home. Luckily for me, my eldest son Aaron stayed at home to look after the farm and thankfully all went smoothly. Grass is something that can easily go out of control when you’re away but my grass measure on July 15th revealed that the average farm cover (AFC) on the main grazing block is on target at 861kgs/DM/Ha. The growth for the past week has been 49kgs/DM/Ha and with demand at 45kgs/DM/Ha there are 19 days of grass ahead which is ideal for this time of year. At time of writing, we are expecting temperatures to hit the high 20’s and on a heavy farm like mine it grass growth should increase significantly. While, there is plenty of grass at the moment, I intend to spread 18 units /acre of Protected Urea plus sulphur over paddocks (16acres) that have been grazed recently and that didn’t get any fertiliser in the last round. If I don’t, grass wouldn’t recover here and I am conscious of starting to build grass for the autumn as I head into August.  Protected Urea is a great option in that I can apply in this kind of dry weather and it is the cheapest form of chemical nitrogen with the lowest emissions.

As the calves are getting older, they are eating a lot more grass. I bought 2 plastic, horse stakes to lift the electric wire so the calves can creep graze ahead of the cows. It’s working and it allows the calves to get priority access to the best quality grass while restricting the cows to the paddock they are in. Otherwise, they will be competing with the cows for the same bite! As I operate a bull system it is critical that these calves keep performing and gaining weight as their dependence on milk will be less from now on. I will introduce meal next month also. With the forward creep system I can use troughs instead of a creep feeder. While there is no evidence of coughing, I will take some faecal samples from the calves next week. The samples will tell me if there is evidence of any lungworm and stomach worms. If there is, I will dose immediately with an ivermectin type injection.

Other than cutting the second cut silage at the end of the month-July is generally a quiet month. It allows me time to improve the grazing infrastructure e.g. I divided the silage field into 4 paddocks each 1.3ha in size, enough for 3 days grazing. This is only temporary fencing with reels, pigtails and can all be dismantled easily again for silage.

‘Shane is farming full-time, just outside Ballinlough, Co Roscommon. He is am married to Grainne, a nurse, and they have three children: Aaron, Neil and Annie. The farm size is 27.5ha and is fragmented into three blocks. They have 35 suckler cows finishing all stock as 16 month bulls and heifers slaughtered off grass or sold as forward stores.