Breeding and Feeding on David Gannon’s farm in Kilconieron
Type Media Article
John McCabe from the Teagasc Aurivo Farm Profitability Programme caught up with David Gannon, who is the Focus Farmer for Co. Galway
Calving went well. We started on 25th January and we calved 17 in Jan, 110 in Feb, 37 calved in March, and 5 in April. We had plenty of help and although it is an intense period I managed to bring our daughter swimming every Sunday morning and get out for the odd family thing. We have holidays booked now for a few days in April, which we try to do every year to recharge before breeding kicks off again.
Breeding
I’ve bred for 9 weeks over the last few years. Last year, anything that came bulling in the final 3 weeks was scrutinised heavily – if she was a good producer based on the milk recording, she was AI’d and if she wasn’t a good producer, I didn’t breed her. The result is that any cow that calved in the last three weeks are fairly good milkers. I have picked the cows that I am going to cull this winter and I have taken the collars off them. They won’t be bred so the temptation won’t there to keep them into 2026.
The plan is to use sexed on the best of the cows and conventional semen on the heifers. I’ve used conventional in the heifers over last few years because I don’t want to risk a poor conception rate with sexed semen. Having all of our heifers calved early and set up for a long career in dairying is more important to us than the getting an extra few heifer calves out of the heifers. The conventional semen offers less of a risk.
Sexed semen has significantly reduced the amount of dairy bull calves I produce and I’ve taken an interest in breeding better beef calves over the few years, which I am refining every year. For instance, I used AA, LM and BB mainly but I will drop the LM going forward. The cows mostly calved the Limousin on their own and before time but there was the odd massive one that tended to be well over time, which I didn’t like. I will use high carcass weight AA bulls and I will use a BB with no more than 4.5% calving difficulty.
I remain very focused on producing the best dairy replacement heifer calves that I can. We are selecting heavily for fat and protein % and I am aiming to keep the milk kgs around zero. On average, this year’s heifer calves are capable of 6300 litres at 4.1% protein and 5.15% fat when they are mature cows.
Feeding
The challenge for the next 6 months is to get large amounts of grass into them while still achieving a good clean graze out. It is easy to do one or the other, but the challenge is to do both. My main aim is to keep the cows absolutely stuffed with leafy grass at all times this year. It is working so far and while it has been a great spell of weather - I am also putting in a nice bit of thought into achieving this balance. Cows are producing 27 litres at 4.89% Fat and 3.58% protein (2.3kg MS) in the 1st week of April. So to get this balance I am doing a few things:
Paddocks
Last summer I pulled out wires to make paddocks bigger or closer to ideal size. I am aiming for 8 acres paddocks (roughly 1 acre per 20 cows). The cows have been let off on 36 hour grazings now with no strip wire so they are stuffed for the first two grazings and have to clean out on the third. I’ve found if the cover is above 1500 that the 36 hour paddocks are hard to clean out.
Pregrazing Yield
I’m walking the place twice a week now to make sure the grass doesn’t get too strong because they’ll eat more if it short and leafy.
Moving Cows on if they are Finished
Sometimes you’d notice that the cows have finished their grass by 12 noon. Any day that happens, I am moving them on to fresh grass. They won’t be stuffed the day they are finished the grass at noon if I don’t move them on and its cheaper to move them to more grass than having to feed lots of meal to keep them milking well on those days. The grass cover, the paddock and the amount left will change all of the time so I’m focused on getting it right as many times as possible for the main grazing season. If anything is going to pay this year, it is going to be stuffing cows with grass.