Oliver O'Hara May update

Grassland

Grass remain very tight on the homefarm. There are 115 ewes with 200 lambs , 7 dry cows and 4 heifers grazing the home block. Ground conditions are still soft making the application of fertiliser difficult. The homefarm did get ½ bag of urea in April. The average farm cover remains below 500kgs/DM/ha so it is therefore difficult to grow grass . The sheep flock are now in 1 group which will help improve the grassland situation and once ground conditions improve another 25 units of nitrogen will be applied per acre.

The leased lands outside Sligo town has plenty of grass with and average farm cover of 800kgs/DM/ha. There are 25 cows with their calves plus a bull grazing this section. This outblock has been divided into 7 sections to allow better grass utilisation. As these lands are leased long-term, 2 ton of lime/acre will be applied this month. The cost of lime is €27/ton spread.

The silage ground got slurry in April and 70 units of N/acre was applied on May 2^nd. There is 22 acres of silage closed now. There are no fodder reserves on the farm so any surplus grass will be baled.

Performance

Two bulls were slaughtered on the 10^th of May. The average carcase weight was 416kgs and graded U= 3= at 14.6 months of age. The average liveweight was 718kgs meaning a killout percentage of 58%. The average daily liveweight gain from birth was 1.5kgs/day.

The remaining of the bulls are on 9kgs of finishing ration plus top quality silage and will be killed before they are 16 months of age .

Animal Health

All lambs have received both a worm dose and a mineral dose. The plan is to worm and vaccinate the calves for clostridials by the end of the month also