Herd Update 10.05.21

Breeding Programme

The Breeding season started on Wednesday the 21^st of April and 100% AI is being used on the farm again in 2021.

• There are 83 mature cows and 26 maiden heifers for breeding this year on the farm.
• Up to Wednesday 12th of May, 77 cows, or 93% of the 83 mature cows put forward for breeding, have been inseminated in the first 3 weeks of breeding.
• The breeding season will last for 10 weeks and finish on 6^th of July.
• Teaser bulls have been fitted with Moocall heat detection along with a chin ball harness for marking the cows.
• Cows have been tail painted yellow for the first round.
• 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 showing signs of standing heat again that evening, that same cow will be AI’d again the next day (12 noon).
• The majority of Newford cows are in an ideal body condition score for breeding. 
• The 26 maiden heifers (main picture above) were synchronised on the 13^th of April and artificially inseminated on the 21^st of April.
• As of 12^th of May 9 of these heifers have being inseminated twice
• Mineral buckets are in all paddocks with cows to prevent grass tetany.
• Air temperature is low at night time increasing the risk of ground frost

Sire Selection Criteria for the Newford Herd

• 5 Star Terminal Index (within & across)
• < 8 % calving difficulty for strong mature cows (beef cow)
• < 5.8 % calving difficulty for young cows (beef cow)
• 70 % reliability on the calving difficulty index
• 2.25 score on Conformation
• < 5.8 % for 1st calvers (beef heifer): 80 % reliability
• 35 Kg predicted carcase weight for mature cows
• 25 Kg predicted carcase weight for young cows and heifers
• Cost of straws less than €18
• Sires which will be used on the Newford Herd for 2021 are as follows:

Beef Animals 

• All the beef animals have being weighed with bullocks weighed on 16^th of April and heifers on 28^th
• The average weight of the 39 bullocks was 447 Kg
• The average weight of the top 20 bullocks was 480 Kg
• Note: The bullocks were rehoused twice during turnout which hampered early season performance.
• The average weight of the 56 heifers was 444 Kg
• The top 24 heifers averaged 480 Kg
• The weighing performance summary is outlined below;

Grassland

• Soil temperature on Newford Farm on Monday the 9^th of May was 12.4 degrees Celcius at 10 cm soil depth
• Newford farm had almost an inch of rain between last Saturday and Sunday (8^th and 9^th of May)
• A half bag of protected urea (38N + S) is being spread per acre after each grazing at the moment.
• While the weather is cold and growth is slow, we can expect a sudden burst of growth shortly, so the farm needs to be prepared for this. Therefore a paddock with a heavy grass cover (2,000 Kg/DM ) was taken out of the grazing rotation as surplus grass this week,
• The farm is aiming to keep the grass cover at roughly 650 Kg DM / Ha at this moment and time.
• The aim is to keep turning stock into grass covers of roughly 1,250 to 1,400 Kg /DM /Ha
• Six acres on the home farm was recently reseeded. These two paddocks have being sown with the grass variety Abergain and Aberchoice with clover (Buddy).
• Sowing rate : 12 ½ Kg of grass seed per acre and 1 ½ Kg per acre of clover seed
• It was followed by three bags of 10-10-20 per acre
• All paddocks for first cut pit silage have been closed since 12^th of April on Cones farm (17 Ha) while 5ha has been closed on Tuohy’s farm for first cut bale silage.

Table below: Grass Cover carried out on the 12^th May 2021