ABP Food Group's Advantage Beef Programme farm liaison officer Aideen Bates recently visited the farm to see how the spring has been going so far.

 The farm is one of the ABP Monitor Farms finishing cattle in a variety of systems and based across the country on a range of different land types.

On the beef side of his enterprise, John is currently finishing his spring-2024-born dairy-beef cattle and is availing of the 20c/kg 'Sustainability Bonus' available to him through the Advantage Beef Programme.

The spring-2024-born dairy-beef heifers were slaughtered from November to January and there were 25 of these with an average weight of 280kg.

The grades for the heifers came back as follows:

One 'O-';
Eight 'O=';
11 'O+';
Five 'R-'.

John also has 18 bullocks slaughtered since December which have averaged 315kg carcass-weight so far.

The grades for the bullocks were as follows:

Five 'O=';
Eight 'O+';
Five 'R-'.

The finishing diet for the beef cattle is a total mixed ration (TMR) composed of high-quality silage, 6kg of beet and 6kg of a 12% high-maize fattening nut.

All the beef sired used on the dairy cows are high carcass merit Angus sires.

The progeny of these are reared through on the farm and finished as beef cattle.

Maiden heifers are generally inseminated to Friesian bulls to produce replacements.

The farm is involved in ABP’s Advantage Beef Programme and therefore receives a 20c/kg Sustainability Bonus on all eligible cattle slaughtered.

Bates highlighted that the Advantage Beef Programme 20c/kg Sustainability Bonus was worth €1,400 across the 25 heifers and over €1,100 for the 18 bullocks before breed, grade, or SBLAS price bonuses were added on to the final price.

The Advantage Beef Programme 20c/kg sustainability bonus is worth approximately €60/animal on the Twohig farm.

More of the factory-fit bullocks will be slaughtered through the scheme in the coming weeks as well as cull cows.

Grazing

As of mid-February, John had not been managing to get cows out to grass due to the constant rainfall making ground conditions challenging for grazing.

Despite this, grass is growing well and there is a good farm cover for when conditions improve.

John managed to get slurry out to the silage ground using an umbilical pipe system at a rate of 2,500g/ac.

There were 40 cows calved as of February 20, and the calving has been thankfully going smooth so far.

Calf rearing and health

Calves receive 4L of colostrum as early as possible after birth.

They are trained onto an automatic feeder within one week-of-age and are given access to an 18% protein crunch to encourage dry feed intake which is vital for calf health and growth.

Rolled oats are added to the calf diet to increase intake, and help speed up the rumen development process.

The rolled oats are also a strategy John is trialling to reduce incidences of summer scour syndrome.

Calves are also given an intranasal vaccination to protect against respiratory diseases.

The dairy cows that have calved already are being offered 5kg/head/day of an 18% coarse ration through the parlour as well as grass silage.

Finished cows and bullocks will be sold to the factory on reaching the target slaughter specification in the coming weeks and the plan on the farm is to keep cows and calves healthy and thriving into the spring and beyond.