Trevor Boland November/December Update 2024
Calving & breeding update
- Autumn calving performance
- Breeding update
- Eurostar figures for Saler bull
Feeding plans
- Silage samples sent for analysis
- Cows are on no ration
- Calves will get ration from 1st December
Weights & finishing results
- Latest weights for yearlings & breeding heifers
- Finishing performance for dairy beef cattle
- Finishing performance of bought in suckler bred catle
Breeding
The autumn calving season has progressed well on the farm with 52 live calves out of 50 cows. Three sets of twins were born and only one calf died shortly after birth so Trevor is very happy with this. The weather also suited too for the cows and calves to remain at grass for after calving until around 20th October. Two more cows are due to calve; one whose time is up and another that is due in January but Trevor is considering selling her.
The calves will start on ration from 1st December. They are currently going out to grass by day from the shed.
The breeding season started on 13th October and by 20th November Trevor was 6 weeks into it. 41 out of 50 females were bred, with 1 repeat. Since then he has had 13 repeats in total and 44 females have been bred, including 9 heifers that were synchronised. 15 cows were inseminated with sexed straws from LM9577 (Drumline S 1185) as planned and 5 are known to have repeated; they were then served with conventional AI straws.
Trevor plans to scan in early December to determine how many cows and heifers have held in calf. He plans to use a Saler stock bull to mop up with the heifers at the end of the breeding season. The bull is €215 on the replacement index and €92 on the terminal index. His daughter milk is +8.7kg, carcass weight is 16.1kg and daughter calving interval is -4.98 days so he is an ideal bull for breeding replacements. His heifer calving difficulty figure is 4.6% at 61% reliability. He is 1.21 for carcass conformation and +3.3 days on age at finish.
Figure 1: Breakdown of Saler stock bull’s Eurostar indexes (November 2024)
Figure 2: Saler stock bull (on the right hand side)
Animal Nutrition
Silage samples have been taken through Aurivo. The diets will be balanced based on the results but the finishing heifers were fed 5kg of ration/head/day, the suckler cows aren’t being fed any ration and the suckler calves will start getting ration from 1st December.
The calves have access to a creep area at the back of the slatted shed, where they can also freely access the grass paddocks by day.
Figure 3: Housed cows
Figure 4: Autumn born calves at grass
Five of the bought in heifers were weighed on 2nd November and averaged 455kg.
Performance
Some of the breeding heifers (7) were weighed on 19th October and averaged 374kg, after gaining 0.33 kg/day since their previous weighing on 22nd September.
The 2023 autumn males (8) were weighed on 6th October and averaged 416kg, after gaining 1.06 kg/day since 21st September.
On 22nd October 9 bought in suckler heifers were sold to the factory. They averaged 249kg carcass weight and graded R-2+ on average at 20.4 months of age. 7 dairy beef heifers were sold on the same day and averaged 229 kg carcass weight, grading O=3- at 20.8 months. These heifers have eaten 2kg of ration/day for 60 days, and a further 5kg for 60 days which is 0.42t of ration, costing €150/head. They were bought for ~€850.
The last 10 of the same group of heifers were finished on 22nd November. The 6 purchased suckler bred heifers averaged 242kg carcass weight at 19.4 months of age and graded R=2= on average. The 4 dairy beef heifers averaged 230kg at 22.4 months of age and graded O=3= on average.
Figure 5: Some of the heifers that were finished on 22nd November