John Dunne July/August 2024
Performance
- The dairy –calf – to beef calves are getting 1.5kgs/meal/day
- All calves are dosed with a white drench
- John weighs the 2024 born calves
Grassland
- The red clover silage is fit to cut for the first time
- John spreads 20 units of pro urea per acre in early August
- PBI highlights poor summer grass growths
Performance
John is now giving 1.5kgs of meal /head /day to the dairy –calf- to beef calves. They are also on good quality after-grass. It has been a difficult summer and John will weigh shortly to monitor progress. Despite been vaccinated there has been four incidences of pneumonia but the calves have recovered quickly after treatment. As a result, John is keeping a close eye on them daily.
Photo: The calves are getting 1.5kg /day
John weighed 75 weanlings that were born this spring. They are behind target at 234kgs for the bulls and 210kgs for the heifers. John would like these to be 300kgs and 250kgs respectively. The 200 report essentially highlights how the cow is performing in rearing her calf. John has had an issue with milk in the herd but through the use of maternal AI straws in the past two years , the replacement heifers should be better in that trait. In addition, John has purchased his replacement heifers and he has found some of these to be poor in milk. Going forward he will not need to purchase as many as he will be breeding from within the herd. To push the weanlings , John has started to forward graze and he will start feeding meal.
Photo: 2024 born calves
Grassland
The red clover sown on July 2nd is now fit to cut in mid August. John was worried that the dry, cold spell after sowing would check the establishment of the crop but it has done well. He is hoping for a yield of 8-9 bales per acre . The crop needs to be cut in dry weather and wilted for two days .
Photo: red clover silage on July 2nd
Photo: 20th August, 2024- red clover silage
Grass growth has been below average for July and August at an average of 34kgsDM/ha and with demand at 36kgsDM/ha , it has been difficult to build grass ahead of the autumn. The advantage of matching demand to supply is that the average farm covers are not too heavy and have remained on target at close to 900kgs/DM/ha.
Grass demand will increase for the autumn as the dairy bred calves will start to eat more. John decided to blanket spread the farm with 20 units of pro urea/acre. He is hoping for a good response and is aiming to increase the days ahead to 30 plus .
Photo: poor grass growth
Photo: 20th August 2024
Photo: Barley will be fit to cut mid September