My Farming Week – Marty Lenehan – BETTER Farm Programme Member

MED member Marty Lenehan, who farms in the shadow of Benbulben, at Ballinfull, Co. Sligo, gave this farm update to the Irish Farmers Journal. He is a member of the Teagasc-Irish Farmers Journal BETTER Beef Programme.

The workload on the farm is slowly easing back to normal as the spring herd is almost finished calving. They started calving in early January and so far things have been progressing well.

Calves are lively and healthy which is a great help. Almost 50% of the calves born from my Simmental stock bull this spring are heifers. The Simmental bull was purchased in 2012 with the intention of breeding replacements.

Unfortunately, last year I had a lot more bull calves born instead of heifer calves. Thankfully, this trend has been reversed this year.

Cows are being fed ad-lib silage, which was analysed at 70DMD. Since last week, the cows have been getting 1kg of concentrates to improve fertility and get them back in calf.

As silage quality was so good this winter, it has reduced the need to feed increased levels of concentrates to support milk yields.                                                                                                                                                                                                         Hygiene is taken seriously on the farm and calving pens are being cleaned out after use, disinfected, and well bedded with straw. Calving pens are also limed to cut down any disease risk.

The breeding period for the spring herd started on the 20^th of March with the Simmental and Charolais stock bulls serving the cows. Replacement heifers have been vaccinated for BVD. Autumn cows had the stock bulls removed on the 15^th of January and were scanned last week. All cows in the autumn herd scanned “in calf” which I am happy with. Weaning will be carried out before the autumn cows go back to grass. Weanlings will go out first and the cows will go out later in the spring when there is more grass growth.

Autumn calvers are being fed ad-lib silage and I am happy that they are holding body condition. I am planning to weigh the autumn calves at the end of the month to get an indication of weight gain over the winter.

(Source – Irish Farmers Journal – Page 45 – Saturday, 22/03/2014)