ABP Food Group's Advantage Beef Programme farm liaison officer Sean Cassidy recently visited the farm to hear how Wesley has been managing this calving season.

 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.

Overall, according to Browne, calving has thankfully been going smoothly so far on the 85-cow farm with no major issues arising to date.

Browne has invested in good calving facilities on the farm over the years. He says that this is essential to safely managing the cows around calving time.

Once cows are calved, they are left in individual pens to bond for 2-3 days and then put out to grass if weather conditions allow.

Cows with their calves are put in groups of 10 in well-sheltered smaller paddocks and monitored closely for the first few days.

The primary breeds on the farm are Limousin, Angus, Saler, and Simmental. Four stock bulls are run with the herd.

These will be let out in early May, and cows will be handpicked and put together in groups to suit each bull.

When making breeding decisions on the farm, all available data is taken into account.

Browne has recently started using The Irish Cattle Breeding Federation's (ICBF's) Herd Plus to identify what myostatin genes the animal is carrying before it is paired with a bull to reduce calving difficulties.

Browne plans on vaccinating the herd for bluetongue soon before the breeding season.

All male progeny on the farm are brought through to finish, and heifers are either retained for replacements or sold for breeding.The bulls are thriving well and are on target to be finished in the summer as under-16-month bull beef.

These bulls will be drafted as they come fit and sent to ABP Clones.

Last year's bulls averaged 425kg carcass-weight at 15.3 months of age.

The spring-2025-born male progeny are on target of being over 500kg at 12 months-of-age.

The yearling bulls have been gradually increased to 8kg concentrates/head/day and their performance will be monitored to see if they need to be pushed up to 10kg closer to slaughter.

Browne recently fitted a third motorised brush to the cattle pens.

He said that he is impressed with the benefits of the brushes in the pens.

He has observed that cattle in the pens with the brushes have a higher daily liveweight gain and are also cleaner and more content.