Cathal Irwin January/February 2024

Breeding
- 12 cows calved by the end of January – 11 live calves.
- Management of the cows post calving

Performance
- The bulls are putting on serious weight and are put on their ad-lib diet
- They were weighed on February 5th.
- The weanlings heifers are averaging 1kg since birth

Grassland
- Even in the West heifers get out to grass
- Closing Plan for silage
- No fertiliser purchased but Cathal aims to source Protected Urea by the end of February
Breeding
The cows starting calving at the beginning of January and by the end of the month 12 had calved ie 60%. While 11 calved with no issues, 1 cow calved early and the calf was dead at birth. To add to the disappointment, the cow remained down and this has added a lot of labour hours for Cathal. At the time of writing the cow has been making steady progress.
Picture 1: Despite one loss - the remainder of the cows have calved easily
Cathal aims to get the calved cows out to grass but conditions need to be very dry . It is likely that they will be indoors for a couple of weeks. Ideally, these cows should be getting high quality mid 70’s DMD silage but the second cut only tested 66% DMD . Therefore, he is adding 1-2kgs of concentrate as he does not want the cows to get thin.
Performance
All the Bulls are SIM x Charolais and were born in Jan 2022 . They were housed on the 9th of September and built up over a few weeks to 4kg of a 16% protein concentrate per day. They have also been fed 76 % DMD Silage. On 15th of October the concentrate was increased to 6kg/head/day. on the 10 of December they were increased to 10-12kg of a high maize finishing ration. They have been fed and Acid buffer since housing and there have been no issues of acidosis or stomach upsets. They have been fed 76 dmd silage since housing and will remain on silage until slaughter. Cathal weighed the bulls of the 5 of February and they are averaging 2.45kg ADG since last weighing on the 26th of December. The best bull is 3.12kg / day since last weight and they have an average weight of 620kgs ie 1.52kgs since birth. They have been straw bedded since housing.
Picture: The 6 bulls are on a full ad-lib diet now
Weanlings Heifers:
The weanling heifers are on 76 DMD silage and have been getting 1.5kg per head per day of a concentrate since housing. They are averaging 0.54kg/day. They are an average weight of 435kg. They have had and ADG since birth of 1.0kg/day since birth. They have been to grass twice since the 6th of January and have had 13 days at grass since then. They have been cleaning off grass on the silage ground. There main advantages are that the heifers are grazing off winter covers off the silage ground. This will make it easier to apply slurry. Spring grazing saves on silage and will help increase performance . Each day at grass is worth at least €2/LU/day.
Grassland
January grazing in Mayo – grazing off silage ground
Cathal managed to get his store heifers out to grass. He has a plan B- in the event of wet weather he is prepared to re house.
The plan is to get the silage ground grazed by mid March. Slurry with then be applied through LESS and followed by 60 units of protected urea by April 1st with the aim of cutting in mid May.