Ken Gill September/October Update 2024
Teagasc / FBD Environmentally Sustainable Farmer of the Year Awards 2024
- Congrats to Ken!
- He was the winner of the Teagasc / FBD Environmentally Sustainable Farmer of the Year 2024 Enhancing Biodiversity category
- View video of him on the Signpost series webinar
Calving update & breeding plans
- Calving performance 2024
- AI bull choice this autumn
- Focus on carcass conformation & age at finish
All 2022 autumn born cattle finished
- Last load of finishing cattle sold 11th October
- Overall heifer performance
- Overall bullock performance
Media
Ken was announced as the Teagasc / FBD Environmentally Sustainable Farmer of the Year 2024 Enhancing Biodiversity category winner at the awards ceremony in October in county Laois.
The awards, kindly sponsored by FBD, were presented to five enterprise winners: dairy, suckler beef, dairy beef, sheep, and tillage, and to four category winners: reducing greenhouse gas emissions, enhancing biodiversity, improving water quality and improving soil health and carbon sequestration.
You can watch his discussion along with the other category winners on the Signpost series webinar at:
Breeding
Calving started on Ken’s farm on 5th August and finished on 28th September, lasting just under 8 weeks in total. In comparison to last year’s calving season which was extended due to a rogue bull that got a number of unplanned heifers in calf, he was delighted with this year’s calving performance. There are 62 live calves out of 63 cows, thanks to two sets of twins. Only one calf died at birth. The only major difficulty that Ken had was with one calf from AA4089 which carried 2 weeks over its due date and the heifer needed help at calving.
The mild autumn also helped Ken with calving outdoors and he used his calf crate in the yard to safely tag, register and castrate bull calves within a few days of birth.
Figure 1: Cows at grass with calves at foot
Ken plans to start breeding at the end of October and has picked 19 heifers and 61 cows for breeding. Some cows have been picked for culling due to age, temperament or low Eurostar indexes. His aim is to breed 80 females and at an expected conception rate of 85% he plans to have 68 females calving down.
According to the September evaluation, the herd’s replacement index is €138. As Ken wants to improve this figure, the heifers he selected are from €141 to €218 on the replacement index. Within this he is looking for a strong daughter milk figure of at least 4kg and this goes up to 19kg (herd average is 6.8kg), the carcass weight is ranging from 4.5kg to 18.7kg (herd average is 10kg), daughter calving interval is -0.45 days to -6.72 days and age at finish is a minimum of -4.1 days up to -20 days.
Ken then split his cows according to their replacement index and their performance, with the best cows being bred to maternal bulls and the other cows being bred to terminal bulls.
The bulls he is using for heifers this year are AA7485 and AA4303 and these will produce suitable replacement heifers for him. The maternal bulls being used on the replacement cows are CH5980, LM6172 and LM9577. The terminal bulls being used are AA4087, CH2216 and CH5626.
Ken’s priority for this year is to improve the carcass conformation of his cattle being sold, without affecting the age at finish. Therefore the maternal and terminal bulls being used are from 1.14 up to 2.7 on carcass conformation and range from 0.71 to -18.42 days on age at finish. The age at finish trait will be really important for him when using more continental genetics n the herd. Ken has also continued to focus on building the milk, fertility and replacement index of the herd with the bulls being used, and a bull has been matched to each cow based on her traits.
Figure 2: Herd Eurostar index (Sept 2024)
Performance
The last of the 2022 born finishing cattle were sold from Ken’s farm on 11th October. Overall the bullocks averaged 353kg carcass weight and graded R-3= at 25.7 months of age. The heifers averaged 304kg carcass weight and graded R-3+ at 24.6 months of age.