Breeding season commences at Newford

With calving completed, Michael Fagan outlines the breeding programme for the Newford herd, highlighting the sires that will be used over the coming weeks.

After starting on January 29, calving came to a conclusion at Newford on April 15. Like all parts of the country during the week beginning April 15, weather was the big issue and hail and rain led to roads flooding in the local area.

Getting stock out to grass remained the biggest issue for the farm, but Newford took the decision to open its doors to let its cows and calves and yearling heifers out to grass between Tuesday, April 16, and Thursday, April 18. The farm had turned out its 19 bulling heifers on March 29, but this small group was easily managed during the wet weeks that have passed since.

A decision to make on breeding

On normal years, Newford would have had its cows and calves gone to grass 3-4 weeks earlier. However, this is not a normal year and that left Newford with another big decision regarding the start of the breeding season.

Newford has always started the breeding season on the third week of April. But the dilemma arose on whether to start breeding on April 22, as cows were only gone to grass, or push back the breeding date to give the cows a chance to adjust – which would also affect drafting date in the future.

As cows were monitored for both cycling and body condition score in the shed, Stephen Friend, the Farm Manager, took the decision that the breeding season would commence on April 22.

Prior to breeding, all the cows and bulling heifers received their mineral bolus and leptospirosis vaccine. Additionally, all cows were tail painted last week and heats have been recorded in a notebook for the last two weeks to monitor breeding activity, which has been positive to date.

During the 10-week breeding season, which will run to July 1, cows will be batched into two groups, with a teaser bull running with each. Another teaser bull will run with the maiden heifers. Three teaser bulls with an average weight of 406kg were bought costing €1,015 each. These bulls will be fitted with MooCall heat detection collars, along with a chin ball harness, to help identify heats.

100% AI will be used on the farm again this year. Once-a-day AI will be used and cows will be inseminated at midday each day. If a cow is inseminated at 12 noon and she is still displaying standing heat again that evening, that same cow will be inseminated again the next day (12 noon).

Sire selection

The criteria for sires for the 2024 breeding season is:

• 5 star on the Terminal Index (within and across breed).
• <5.1% calving difficulty for all adult cows and young cows (>68% reliability).
• 95 for Conformation.
• >35kg predicted carcass weight (mature cows).
• >25kg predicted carcass weight (young cows).
• <6.1% calving difficulty for first calvers (maiden heifers).
• >25kg predicted carcass weight.
• Cost of AI straws less than €20.

Table 1: AI sires selected for the 2024 breeding season

This article was first published as part of the Newford newsletter. More information on Newford is available here.