Eamon & Donnchadh McCarthy September/October 2024
Breeding
- Autumn Breeding Season
- Heat Detection for the breeding season
- Prep for the spring calving herd
Breeding
The autumn calving batch have finished calving with breeding now underway for the same group of cows. !00% AI is used on the farm and the McCarthy’s installed the Sense hub collars this year to help them with heat detection in the herd. Each cow is fitted with a collar and a text message is received when a cow is in heat and ready to be served. The signal box which is used as part of the sense hub is installed in a trailer which is moved around wherever the cows are at the time of breeding. This mobile unit is currently set up in the yard near where the cows are housed. There was 1 cow out of 22 cows left to be bred within the autumn herd across a 6 week breeding season which is very good performance to date.
The spring calving batch are housed and are on a diet of silage only. They will receive their vaccination of Bovilis Scour Vaccine in January ahead of the spring calving season.
Picture 1: Spring calving cows housed and on a diet of silage only
Picture 2: Mobile Sense hub unit used for breeding
Performance
There is a group of bulls being finished on the farm with the intention to have them killed under 16 months of age. Eamon mentioned that the liveweight is back on these bulls and felt they were probably were too light starting there finishing diet which is now having a knock on effect on their current liveweight. There was one bull weighing 485 kilograms and the remaining group averaging about 650 kilograms. These bulls will be coming up to 16 months shortly so they’ll be drafted for slaughter soon.
Picture 3: U16 month bulls nearly ready to be drafted for slaughter
Spring born weanlings are housed on the farm and are due to be weighed shortly. The currently are on a diet of 72 DMD silage along with 2 kg’s of concentrates. This group of animals are also going to be faecal egg tested and receive a dose for internal parasites based on results if required. The plan for this group of animals is to increase them up to 4 kg’s of meal in the coming weeks and then switch them to a finishing diet in January. They will be targeted to be killed U16 months of age.
Photo 4: Spring born bulls recently housed
Grassland
The majority of stock have now been housed apart from breeding heifers which were born in autumn 2023 and heifer weanlings born in spring of 2024. The two batches of heifers are currently being grazed in one group, with the autumn born heifers AI’d recently as part of the autumn breeding season. They will remain at grass for a few weeks – weather permitting. The McCarthy’s will aim to turn the 2024 born heifers first out to grass early next spring. This will help build liveweight gain on these heifers ahead of the spring breeding season.
Picture 5: Heifers out grazing - ground conditions holding up well