Future Beef Newsletter December 2023
Ed Curtin
Michael & Niall Biggins - Farm Update | Teagasc Grange - Farm Update | Top Tips for December | December Deadlines
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December Deadlines
ACRES
- Tranche 2 deadline for submission of plans is 5.30pm 13th December 2023
- Tranche 1; all applicants must have completed training by 31st December
- You cannot graze catch crops sown under ACRES until 1st January 2024
SCEP
- You must be certified in the Bord Bia QA scheme by January 22, 2024. You had to apply by the 16th October – so follow up in December
- Further Extension to Female Replacement Strategy - Action 2. A text issued to a cohort of SCEP participants on 27th November advising them of a further extension to the female replacement strategy until the 22 January 2024
Other
- All manure movements must be notified to the Department of Agriculture by 31st December
- You can plough grass from 1st December
- You can plough/apply herbicide to tillage ground from 1st December
Farm Profile - Ed Curtin
Ed Curtin with his Mother Breda
Ed Curtin farms in partnership with his mother Breda in Rowels, Meelin near Newmarket, Co. Cork.
He runs a suckling to weanling system consisting of 24 autumn – calving suckler cows. The males are sold for export while the heifers, not retained for breeding, are sold for export or sold in show and sales in the local mart. Ed is using 100% A.I. to allow him to use the best genetics available.
He has a split farm with 34ha of heavy land around the farmyard. Due to its heavy nature and the system of autumn calving the home farm is mostly used for two-cut silage and calving the cows in the autumn.
Ed also buys in 51 dairy bred (AA/HE) calves every year and brings these through to slaughter or else sells them in the mart as forward stores. The 11ha’s that Ed has rented 25Km away is drier and therefore he concentrates on this first for paddocks and for the dairy beef system. Currently there are 24 main divisions on the farm with the ability to split fields with temporary fencing.
Ed’s plan is to stay at the same cow numbers but to increase the efficiency on farm through increasing the number of calves per cow per year and liveweight performance at grass.
Read more here.
Farm Update - Ed Curtin
Ed invested in a new cattle shed in 2017 with a TAMS grant to modernise his facilities, reduce labour, , to allow safer handling of stock, increase slurry storage for the 6 month plus winters that he faces and to provide more lying and feeding space for his growing herd. He built a 5 bay double slatted tank which has mats installed. He also added a roofed cattle crush which includes a number of features to allow for safer handling of cattle (see video below).
Working full time off farm and having a young family means that time and safety are very important to Ed and he adds, “I adopt an approach to keeping the place tidy as you go to reduce the risk of trips and falls.”
The suckler cows are housed in this shed and their calves have access to a separate slatted lie back area. The maiden heifers and the dairy beef weanlings are also housed in the shed.
The older 3 bay slatted shed was built in 2010 and is used to house the dairy beef yearlings for finishing. Ration can be fed at the back of the shed via pull-out doors that can be closed afterwards to prevent draughts from the prevailing wind.
Pull out doors for feeding ration to the finishing cattle
Read more here.
See video below where Ed demonstrates some of the safety features on his farm:
Farm Update - Michael & Niall Biggins
Michael & Niall Biggins
Michael Biggins and his son Niall farm in partnership just outside the village of Glencorrib in Co.Mayo. All of the 68 cows and in calf heifers have been housed now but there are 33 weanling heifers still out on grass on a dry outfarm. However, Michael needs to get them housed as soon as possible.
Niall works full-time off farm, Monday to Friday and in recent weeks Michael has been on the road a lot with his role in IFA. There are jobs to catch up on and this weekend has been put a side to carry out some priority tasks namely;
December Jobs-
- The cows need to be clipped and treated for lice
- Cows will then be conditioned scored and penned into 3 main groups
- 4 culled cows will be sold to help make space for the 33 weanlings heifers that are still out on grass
- The first cut bales are open and a silage sampled will be taken ASAP
- Faecal samples showed 2 incidences of rumen fluke in the weanlings last week. Michael wants to further investigate by faecal sampling the cows and the weanlings for worms and both rumen and liver fluke and then treat accordingly.
When all of this work is completed, the rest of December and January should be a quieter time with just some routine feeding and observation. Christmas and the New Year will be a time to re-charge the batteries before the cycle starts again with the first cows calving in February!
A long grazing season in Mayo! The weanling heifers are still out on grass plus 2kgs of meal/day
Read more here.
Farm Update - Colin Byrne, Teagasc Grange
Colin Byrne, Teagasc Grange
Body condition scoring
Suckler farmers should aim to condition score their cows at least three times per year, housing, pre-calving and breeding. This means farmers should handle their cows as per guidelines described in the video. Assuming that a cow has a BCS 3.25 – 3.5 at housing, 65-68% dry matter digestibility (DMD) grass silage, fed ad libitum during the dry period, is sufficient to allow for some mobilising of body reserves and aim for calving at BCS of ~3.0. It is important to remember that 80% of the calf birth weight is grown in the last three months of the pregnancy. Where herd BCS is not uniform, group cows by BCS at housing and feed as appropriate to increase BCS to 3.0 before calving or maintain BCS if at BCS 3.0. If cows are in good BCS (3.0+) and only better quality silage (>70% DMD) is available, farmers should restrict access to silage or incorporate straw into the silage to dilute the quality of the offered feed. A pre-calving mineral should be offered to cows at least six weeks before calving to reduce the risk of health and metabolic problems around calving. Minerals and vitamins can be offered via water supply, boluses, mineral licks, dusting on silage or in concentrate feed, if offered. Pre-calving calcium should be minimised and magnesium increased to aid calcium metabolism. Vitamins A, D and E should be fed at high levels to ensure good immune function and reduce the post-calving risk of infection and milk fever. Conducting a silage quality analysis will provide the nutritional value, preservation efficiency and mineral profile.
Spring-calving cows should be at a BCS of ~3.0 (0-5 scale) at calving to allow for a BCS loss of 0.5 prior to breeding. Cows that are in poor body condition post-calving (BCS <2.5) will have a delayed return to heat. The effects of low BCS at calving are only partially reversed by placing cows on a high plane of nutrition after calving and extra feeding after calving will not fully compensate for poor BCS at calving. For example, a cow with a poor BCS of 1.75 will not cycle until 71+ days after calving, whereas cows with a BCS of 3.0 will be cycling by day 55. An extended post-partum interval increases overall calving interval.
Target BCS scores for suckler cows
Teagasc Grange – Suckler herd update
Weaning
Calves were weaned between the 6th and 13th of October, the average weaning weight was 290 kg. Cows were housed when separated from calves and have remained indoors as weather conditions meant ground was not suitable for a return to grazing. The weanlings remained outdoors until the 1st of November. Calves are currently indoors being offered 73 DMD grass silage and 1 kg of concentrates.
Replacement heifers
30 weanlings heifers have been purchased as replacements. Heifers are Limousin x Simmental and all in the top 20% (five star) for Eurostar replacement index. Heifers weighed an average of 310 kg on arrival. Heifers are vaccinated for pneumonia, IBR, salmonella and BVD on arrival. Heifers will be offered 73 DMD silage and 3 kg of concentrate over the winter, these heifers will be prioritised and turned out as soon as ground conditions allow. These heifers will be AI’d to easy calving, high replacement index bulls in May/June 2024 to calve down at 24 months of age.
Finishing performance
Finishing of 2022 born animals is slightly behind last year. To date, eight Charolais heifers have been finished at an average age of 19 months, with a carcass weight of 294 kg; R=, 3-. Fourteen Hereford sired heifers, from first calvers, have been finished at an average age of 18.6 months, with a carcass weight of 254 kg; R-, 4-. Ten Hereford sired steers, from first calvers also, have been finished at an average age of 19 months, with a carcass weight of 282 kg; R-, 2+. The remaining Charolais sired animals will be drafted for slaughter in the coming months with a target of having the heifers finished by 21 months and the steers finished by 23 months of age. The remaining animals are being offered 73 DMD grass silage ad libitum and 5 kg high energy barley based ration daily.
Cow nutrition
Calving is due to start in early February so any corrections that are required to cow condition should be made well in advance of expected calving date. For example, if cows are in poor BCS introducing some concentrate to correct this now should have minimal impact on calf size. Likewise, overfat cows should be restricted now, restricting cow closer to calving may lead to reduced colostrum quality or weaker cows at calving. Remember, you cannot starve calving difficulty out of cows and heifers! At Grange, in-calf cows and heifers are currently indoors and being offered 69 DMD silage. At weaning, in early October, cows weighed 644 kg on average with a BCS of 2.8. While the BCS average is okay, the range is 2.35 to 3.5. Cows with a BCS less than 2.5 will be grouped together and offered 0.5 kg on concentrate until they reach their target BCS, this shouldn’t take longer than 4 – 6 weeks once the cow has been dried off. In-calf heifers currently weigh 546 kg on average with a BCS of 3, ranging from 2.75 to 3.5. At the moment, the heifers at the lower end of the range will be monitored to check BCS changes, the lower BCS in some is attributed to the wet conditions and poorer performance in animals in autumn on many farms.
Happy Christmas!
The Future Beef Team would like to wish you and yours a happy, peaceful and safe Christmas. Thank you for following us in 2023 and we look forward to sharing the stories of Future Beef farmers with you in 2024.