Change brings reduction in herd health issues for dairy-beef farm
Peter O’Hanrahan – a participant in Teagasc’s DairyBeef 500 Campaign – farms in partnership with his father Thomas, operating a calf to beef system, where 200 calves are purchased and carried to beef annually.
Giving a brief background to his farming journey to delegates at the recent series of DairyBeef 500 Spring Conferences, O’Hanrahan said: “I completed the Green Cert in Kildalton College and then went back farming in a registered farm partnership in 2016. We’re farming 90ha of owned grassland. It’s relatively good, free-draining soil with a long grazing season.
Over the years, the father and son combo have invested in their business with the construction of a purpose-built calf shed and a finishing unit to coincide with increasing stock numbers on the farm. However, the area that garnered the greatest response was a focus on animal health. This encompasses a focus on sourcing policies, calf housing and the implementation of a herd health programme.
On this, O’Hanrahan said: “I purchased calves through dealers. It was the easy thing to do at the time, as I was working off farm and it was the easiest way to get calves into the yard. But I started to get issues. These were not all just from dealers but our sheds were also not up to scratch”.
“I approached local farmers to strike deals to buy all the calves off farm and - at the moment - I am not travelling any more than 20 minutes from the home farm to collect calves. When the calves arrive at my farm, they are tagged for the automatic calf feeder [if they are not already EID tagged].
“Calves are let rest for 24 hours before vaccination, which includes pneumonia and IBR, while treatments are also provided for coccidiosis. Three to four weeks later, they get a booster for pneumonia and again before housing. There has been a noticeable drop in herd health issues since we changed the shed and introduced a vaccination programme. The shed and vaccination programme are working very well.”
Calf type
The majority of the calves purchased into the system are Holstein Friesian males, with a small number of early-maturing animals sourced. Commenting on purchasing these calves, O’Hanrahan explained: “I fill the shed twice in the year. I buy 120 calves in late January / early February, rear them and then go again. Filling the shed early is the most important thing for me. The calves are three weeks old coming in and I’m purchasing mainly Holstein Friesians because they are the breed that farmers mainly have at that time of year.
“The Holstein Friesian are priced correctly relative to their carcass output. I know what type of carcass I’m getting – in the range of 300-320kg – and they are good convertors of grazed grass and silage, which is the cheapest feed I have.”
The Kilkenny-based farmer pointed to a number of areas he’d like to see improvements in before being tempted to move away from the system that’s already in place on the farm.
“Locally, Herdford and Angus calves are not available to me at that time of the year. In terms of their value compared to Friesian, the beef calf needs to deliver at slaughter. Sometimes they are not hitting their specs, like their carcass weight. I just know what I’m getting with a Friesian; it’s an animal that will work for my system."
O’Hanrahan also feels that the quality of beef sires used needs to improve to make him consider switching from a Holstein Friesian to a beef-bred calf, adding: “A dearer beef calf that fails to deliver additional revenue at slaughter is worse than a Friesian due to the higher purchase cost. Sire quality needs to improve to produce a better calf that’s capable of hitting carcass weights and grades”.
While the ‘cherry on the cake’ would be having access to fully genotyped calves, O’Hanrahan feels that the use of sire data and the examination of Commercial Beef Values will be key in the future to give a picture of an animal’s expected performance on his farm.