Trevor Boland September/October 2024
Breeding
- Calving update
- Breeding season has started
- Bull choices for replacements & terminal cattle
Animal Nutrition
- Fodder budget update
- Feed outlook is good for the winter
- Feeding rates for finishing heifers
Performance
- Finishing performance for 9 heifers
- Weights of 16 remaining heifers
- Weights for 2023 autumn born bullocks
Breeding
The autumn calving season is progressing well on the farm. There are 43 live calves so far, with a further 7 expected and only 1 mortality at birth to date. Calving started on 24th July and is expected to be finished by early November. One cow is due in January 2025 and Trevor plans to sell her live as she is falling outside of his system.
Photo 1: Calved cows with calves at foot
Breeding started on 13th October and Trevor will use AI bulls to start, and use a bull to mop up at the end of the season. He has 20 Drumline S 1185 (LM9577) sexed straws bought with the aim of producing replacement heifers from these. The bull has a replacement index of €192 and a terminal index of €194. Within these indexes, he has a daughter milk figure of 4.6kg, daughter calving interval of 1.1 days and is 3% on cow calving difficulty at 74% reliability. He also has a predicted carcass weight of 38.3kg, carcass conformation of 2.69 and age at finish of 2.72 days. Shannon Stan (LM9379) is another Limousin AI bull that Trevor is using who has similar indexes.
Pottlereagh Mark (CH4160) is being used as a terminal bull on the cows that Trevor does not want to breed replacements from. He is €129 on the terminal index with a predicted carcass weight of 34.5kg and a carcass conformation of 2.00, with -1.57 days on age at finish. He has a minus figure for daughter milk (-5 kg) which makes him unsuitable for breeding replacements in the herd, but has a cow calving difficulty of 4.4% at 99% reliability.
Animal Nutrition
Trevor has completed his fodder budget for this winter and estimates that he has sufficient feed for a typical winter. He intends to house 50 cows, 51 calves and 22 store heifers. The winter period typically lasts from November to March (5 months in total). There are 600 bales of silage in the yard, which includes 47 locally bought bales. This will give him 160 days of feed and he also has the option to buy extra silage if needed so he is in a good position for the winter. The heifers will be fed 1kg of barley/head/day over winter also.
The dairy beef heifers are being fed ration since 1st August. They are eating 4kg of ration/head/day which is to be increased to 5kg/head/day in the last 2 weeks. They are expected to be sold by the end of October; some were being fed at grass and the remainder were being fed in the shed. They are eating a 13% crude protein nut. Trevor expects that they AAX cattle will qualify for the bonus but the HEX cattle won’t be paid on carcass weights under 240kg.
Photo 2: Some of the finishing heifers that are being fed ration at grass
Performance
16 of the finishing dairy beef heifers were weighed on 11th October. They averaged 490kg and had gained 1.81kg/day on average since the previous weighing on 5th October.
8 of last year’s autumn born bullocks were weighed on 6th October. They averaged 416kg and gained 1.06kg/day since 21st September.
Nine dairy beef heifers were finished from the farm on 20th September. They averaged 225kg carcass weight and graded O=3= at 19 months of age.
Photo 3: Store heifers at grass