Farmer Focus: We can plan for everything but the weather
Matthew-Brownlee © Steffan Hill Unsettled wet weather in the past few weeks has led to a delay in the harvesting of our second silage cut.
This has had a knock-on effect on our grazing cattle, and left us short of grass in some places, as after second cut we had hoped to be able to reduce stocking rate and offer high-quality aftergrass.
Unfortunately, we can plan everything but the weather.
We are now in a four to five week routine of treating cattle for worms.
Visible cattle seem to be performing well at grass this year, and after making some baled silage from surplus grazing and topping some fields, grass quality is becoming reasonable good again.
See also: Ensuring good grass to graze proves tough
On our farm we are trying to improve the productivity of our cows.
In past years, I have had cows I planned to cull, but they run with the normal batch all year, end up in calf, and so stay for another year.
Typically, these cows have chronic foot problems, wean a lighter calf, or maybe lose a quarter to mastitis.
To avoid temptation this year, cows marked for culling have been grazed separately with no bull, and are receiving 2kg of meal a day.
My thoughts are to slaughter these cows off the grass, as opposed to re-housing them, after the calf is weaned, then fattening them.
See also: New breeding bulls busy after turnout
I believe this is a financially better option and results in the cow being cashed in quicker.
The calves will probably need to be weaned earlier than the rest. For this reason I plan to add a creep feeder for these calves this week.
Our bulls have been in from 18 May and we plan to scan this week.
Although this scan will not be able to show us all pregnancies, it will give us a reflection of performance so far, and maybe also indicate a few problem cows that can be treated or removed from the main herd for culling.
Bulls will be removed on 1 August leaving an 11-week breeding period.
Matthew Brownlee farms 121ha alongside his father. They run 100 Limousin cross suckler cows and buy in store cattle to finish