200-day weights under the spotlight at Newford

With the busy breeding season concluding on July 4, the focus for Stephen Frend on the Newford Farm is keeping good quality grass ahead of stock to drive animal performance.

On a finishing farm like Newford, one of the key components of reducing slaughter age is ensuring that weanlings are achieving excellent weight gains of over 1.2-1.3kg/day over the first summer.

Stress events like weaning, castration and housing can reduce liveweight gain. In recent years, Newford has been castrating their males earlier compared to most beef farms. Newford will get their vet to castrate the bulls in the first week of August, before they are six months of age. They have found castrating and leaving the males with the cows after castration helps reduce stress and will therefore maintain animal performance.

Performance

200-day weight is an international Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for suckler herds. A calf’s 200-day weight can be accurately predicted using average daily gains, provided they are weighed between 100 and 300 days.

In simple terms, the 200-day weight report, available through ICBF, measures the cow’s ability to rear her calf. Stephen weighed both cows and calves on July 5^th; the ICBF report highlighted that the average daily gain of all calves was 1.3kg/head/day, which is very good level of performance.

The target for suckler herds is to have the male calves weighing 300kg and the female calves weighing 250kg at 200 days. The report predicts that both male and female calves in Newford will exceed this target and reach 316kg and 290kg, respectively.

Table 1: Overview of weight performance of calves born on Newford and their dams

This report will also present the efficiency of each cow as a percentage of their bodyweight which they weaned. The aim is to produce lighter mature cows that can wean a calf equal to or greater than their heavier counterparts. The target here for suckler farms is that the cow rears a calf that is at least 42% of her own weight. The ICBF report for Newford highlights an average efficiency of 52% (average calf weight (303kg) divided by the average cow weight (589kg) x 100 = 52%).

Store performance

All store cattle were also weighed on July 5^th (see table 2). Drafting of stock suitable for slaughter off grass will also be a priority for August. Stephen plans to introduce meal in August at 2kg/head/day, with the plan to finish the heifers off autumn grass.

Table 2: Store cattle weights on Newford Farm on July 5^th

For more information on the animal health and grassland management practices being undertaken at Newford Farm, click here. This article was adapted from the Future Beef newsletter for August. For more information on the Future Beef Programme and to sign up to future newsletters, click here.