Cathal Irwin September/October Update 2024
Latest updates
- Fodder budget update
- Purchased silage – was it value for money?
- Silage samples to be taken
Breeding
Cathal scanned the cows and heifers on 3rd August and confirmed that 8 heifers and 10 cows are due to calve between 26th January and 4th April.
Figure 1: Pen of in-calf heifers
He bred the heifers to LM5887 who is a more terminal bull but has a low heifer calving difficulty rate of 3.2% at 83% reliability. He has a terminal index of €124 and is good for carcass weight at 18.9kg, and carcass conformation at 2.41, although he is +5.4 days at age of finish. While he has a replacement index of €125, he only has +2.9kg for daughter milk and is +4.39 days on daughter calving interval. However as Cathal does not intend to keep replacements from him and is only concerned with getting a live calf, this does not bother him.
Figure 2: Breakdown of figures for LM5887 (September 2024 evaluation, source: ICBF)
The cows are in calf to the Simmental stock bull who is well balanced for terminal and maternal traits.
Cathal plans to feed the cows a pre-calving mineral from 8 weeks pre-calving to ensure their mineral status is good at calving. Last year he had no option but to feed poor quality silage to the cows and although they were getting a pre-calving mineral, Cathal found that some calves were lazy at birth and slow to suckle. This year the silage quality is much better and his new shed is allowing him to have extra housing space for the cows. However he is keen to avoid any similar issues to last winter.
Animal Health
The cows were weaned in September in the shed and were then turned back out to grass.
The bulls have been dosed for rumen fluke as it can be an issue on the farm and Cathal noticed that their dungs were loose and bubbly so he treated them. The heifers have been dosed for lungworms, stomach worms and lice with an ivermectin product. All the weanlings were dosed with a triclabendazole product for all 3 stages of liver fluke. Cathal plans to take faecal egg samples 2-3 weeks after dosing to check that the products worked.
Figure 3: Weanling bulls eating silage
All the weanlings have been vaccinated against RSV, Pi3 and mannheimia. Cathal vaccinated the bought in bulls against IBR.
The suckler cows will be vaccinated against rotavirus, coronavirus and e.coli 3-12 weeks pre-calving in order to prevent scours in next year’s calves after birth.
Animal Nutrition
A fodder budget was completed on Pasturebase for Cathal. Based on his winter stock numbers of 10 cows, 1 stock bull, 8 in calf heifers and 33 weanlings, Cathal would need 340 bales of silage for a 6 month winter. He currently has 360 bales of silage in the yard, 180 of which were bought, and allowing for ration being fed to the weanlings he will expects to have more than enough feed for the winter.
He bought silage for €35/bale delivered this year. Using the Teagasc Relative Value of Feeds online calculator, and assuming €230/t for barley and €455/t for soya bean meal, it calculates that 68% DMD silage is worth €35/t as fed, 72% DMD silage is worth €37/t as fed and that 77% DMD silage is worth €42/t as fed, all at 20% dry matter. Cathal plans to test the silage which will give him a DMD and dry matter result for the bales and he can compare the feed costs, but overall he is happy with the value for money for them. He estimates that it would have cost over €30/bale to make the silage himself. The calculator is available here.
Figure 4: Silage bales are separated by cutting date in the yard
The heaviest bulls are being fed 4kg of a 16% crude protein nut per head per day and the lighter group are eating 3kg/head/day of the same ration.
The heifers are being fed 1.7kg of a 16% crude protein nut/head/day also.