Suckler, dairy-beef and tillage farming in the hills of Carnew – Agriland.ie

This week, Agriland paid a visit to a suckler, dairy calf to beef and tillage farm located in the hills just outside Carnew in Co. Wicklow.

Brian Doran is farming a total of 250ac of both owned and rented round. His tillage enterprise this year includes approximately 80ac of winter wheat and 60ac of spring barley.

His grassland includes a 75ac block of grazing land at home and a 35ac bloc of grassland located a short distance up the road.

Brian is involved in ABP Food Group’s Advantage Beef Programme and is one of the eight Monitor Farms involved in the initiative, which offers all participants a 20c/kg sustainability bonus on beef cattle for meeting the scheme’s eligibility criteria.

The three groups of cattle on the farm are:

• Suckler herd;
• Yearling cattle;
• Dairy-beef calves.

As well as his farming enterprise, Brian also carries out some agri-machinery hire work such as baling, slurry and fertiliser spreading for farmers in the surrounding region.

Brian said his fertiliser spreading service is popular with farmers as his spreader is fully GPS-controlled with section control and auto steer.

Advantage Beef Programme

Brian joined the ABP sustainability initiative when his factory representative Dennis Brennan told him about the 20c/kg sustainability bonus for eligible cattle.

He said: “Dennis told me about the Advantage scheme and told me I could get the 20c/kg on all breeds from both by suckler and dairy beef cattle once they met the eligibility criteria so it was a no brainer for me to join up.”

Brian noted that dairy-bred steers should be under 400kg carcass weight and suckler-bred steers should be under 420kg carcass weight to be eligible for the initiative.

“Amie Coonan is the Advantage Beef Programme farm liaison officer here and the farm liaison team are a good help too. They do a bit of silage testing and soil sampling so that’s a great help as well,” he added.

Suckler herd

Brian has 44 suckler cows – all of which are calved in the spring with a major focus on a compact calving season on the farm.

Breeding is carried out by way of a Charolais and Limousin stock bull, and while the Charolais cattle do perform well on the farm – Brian has a preference for the Limousin progeny.

Replacement heifers are purchased in, generally as in-calf heifers and progeny from the suckler herd is generally all finished as beef, with the exception of a few stylish heifers that are shown at a special breeding heifer sale at Tullow Mart.

The cows are predominantly all continental bred with a focus on a cow that has good fertility and milk but will also produce a good weanling every year.

Calving generally kicks off in late January with the aim of being wrapped up by March.

Brian said: “I work on a 12-week calving season but I try to have 90% of the cows calved in 10 weeks. The bulls come out from the cows after three months of breeding and that’s it.

“Anything not in calf after that is culled, young or old it doesn’t matter because I am gone off working at tillage in the spring and I don’t have time to be waiting on one or two cows to be calving.”

Cows are housed before calving in slatted pens with rubber mats and a straw-bedded layback. Any cows approaching calving are kept in the straw layback and calved there.

Once calved, cows are kept on their own with the their calf for three to four days, and are then left in group dry-bedded pens until weather conditions allow them to go to grass.

Brian has a full vaccination plan in place for all cattle on the farm and believes it is essential. Calves are vaccinated against pneumonia in late August and get their second shot four weeks later and weaning begins after that.

Cows and calves are brought in in small batches and are housed separately for a few days and then go back out in separate groups. Calves are creep fed concentrates before weaning.

Dairy calf to beef

Brian buys approximately 30 beef-sired calves from the dairy herd every year and finishes these as steers at under 24 months of age.

The calves are purchased in March and are generally all February and March-born. Brian buys all male calves, saying: “I stopped doing [dairy-beef] heifers because I can’t get weight onto them.

“I can get weight onto a dairy-beef bullock but I think the dairy-beef heifers have too light of carcasses – for the same money at purchase.”

His preference is for Belgian Blue-sired dairy-beef calves saying “the Blues will grade, I’d get 70-80% of the Blues into R’s and the the others would be Os.”

Calves remain on 2kg of concentrates/head/day for the first 12 months and concentrates are removed from the diet for their second season at grass.

Yearling cattle and grass quality

All male beef cattle on the farm are finished as steer beef and both dairy-beef and suckler heifers and steers are batched together for their second season at grass.

Brian has a big focus on grass quality on the farm but said that this year has been “very difficult to maintain good grazing grass quality”.

Grass supplies came under pressure on the farm this year so Brian had to offload some of his yearling cattle to alleviate pressure on grass supplies.

He added: “This is the toughest year I’ve ever seen for grass. We had a late spring then a dry spell followed by a cold spell with no growth and now were back to cold weather again in July.

“It’s been a hard year for grass. I’d usually take out anywhere from 200-250 surplus bales and this year I think I only have 40 or 50 surplus bales from the paddocks.”

He said that with grass supplies tight, “some of the paddocks are being grazed too late and I am having to graze paddocks I should be taking out to mow”.

Fattening cattle

Cattle on the farm are generally finished under 24-months-of-age or “maybe a handful go over the 24 months”, Brian said. This spring, all cattle on the farm were finished before April 1.

Yearling cattle are rehoused in mid-October. Before housing, these cattle are fed concentrates under a fence wire in the field to help the diet transition from grass to silage.

Brian added: “I find that when they get a bit of meal on grass before housing, they’re not inclined to go back [in performance] when they’re housed.”

Cattle start on 3kg of concentrate/head/day in the shed and are built up to 5-6kg/head/day up to Christmas and are then moved up to 7-8kg concentrate/head/day up to finish.

Cattle are fed concentrates through a diet feeder with silage and straw. All beef cattle go to ABP Slaney.

Brian explained he his happy enough with his current beef stem, stating that the dairy calf to beef “works well” alongside his suckler enterprise and added that the Advantage Beef Programme sustainability initiative is “a great bonus” to both his beef systems.