ABP Demo Farm: 78% of 2021-born heifers finished by October 1

A total of 145 of the 2021-born heifers on the ABP Demo Farm have now been finished. 15 more will be finished next week and the remaining 30 will be finished within in the next two weeks.

The strategy on the farm is to finish all heifers and steers before the second winter as soon as they reach a fat score of ‘3’. 78.5% of the 2021-born heifers on the farm were finished before October 1, this year.

None of the 2021-born bullocks have been finished yet, however the first batch of the steers are fit and will be sent to ABP Slaney for processing next week.

50 of the heifers from the ABP Demo Farm that have been slaughtered spent their finishing phase at the Tully Progeny Test Centre in Co. Kildare, where the heifers’ genetics were recorded, as well as feed intake, feed efficiency and methane emissions.

All 2021-born cattle have been housed on the farm for finishing. The 2022-born cattle are all still at grass and getting 2kg/head/day of a 16% protein nut and also have access to straw for feeding.

Straw was reintroduced in recent days due to the reduced dry matter (DM) of the grass.

The aim is to keep as many of the 2022-born cattle as possible out on grass for the duration of November. All of this year’s calves were given their second shot of the pneumonia vaccine last week, plenty of time ahead of housing.

Growth is still fairly good on the farm at 35kg/dry matter (DM)/ha/day and the farm cover is 1,120kg/DM/ha which is high.

2022-born cattle were weighed this week and the average weight of the approximately 400 calves was 220kg, with an average daily gain of 0.79kg/day over the past month.

With more of the 2021-born cattle being finished, shed space is starting to come available for calves. The youngest, lightest calves are generally housed first, while the stronger calves are housed last. In spring, the lighter of these cattle are again let out to grass first.

Store lambs on ABP Demo Darm

Approximately 570 ewe and wether lambs have been bought and were weighed two weeks ago. The average weight of the lambs is 35.6kg and the average daily gain of the lambs has been 150g/day.

Lambs are not receiving concentrates and are on grazed grass alone.

The lambs are being foot-bathed every month with Zinc Sulfate to mitigate against any lameness issues. They have also received their second shot of clostridial vaccine.

A mobile handling unit is used to foot bath, weigh and treat the lambs and an electronic identification (EID) tag reader helps to speed up the weighing process.

An 8ac grassland field that had been performing poorly and had a high level of docks was sprayed off and sown with Tyfon this autumn.

After a slow start, the Tyfon is growing well and when lambs hit 41-42kg they will be allowed access to the Tyfon for the finishing period.

The aim is to use the Tyfon to reduce the level of meal being fed to the lambs at finishing. Once grazed, this Tyfon field will be reseeded in spring with either multi-species or a Perennial rye grass mix.

Lambs will be drafted for slaughter at 48-49kg and the aim is for a lamb with a fat score of 3 and a carcass weight of 21-22kg.

Heifer kill out results

The average kill-out percentage of the cattle processed so far has been 51%. The finishing diet for the cattle includes 0.5kg straw/head, ad-lib silage which has been tested with a dry matter digestibility (DMD) of between 72% and 84%.

Heifers are receiving 5kg concentrates/head/day and the steers have been built up to 7-8kg concentrates/head/day.

The most recent batch of heifers were finished on the ABP Demo Farm at the end of October and the heifers from Tully were finished around the same time.

Finishing results: 2021-born heifers from ABP Demo Farm and the farms heifers that went to Tully:

The lightest heifer finished on the most recent batch had a carcass weight of 217kg. The heifers from the demo farm only had one O- and its carcass weight was 240kg.

The heifers finished in the Tully batch had four O= grades and no O-grades.

So far, all the heifers slaughtered from the farm have been under 20 months of age and the heifers making the R grades are sired by Belgian Blue, Limousin, Angus, Aubrac and Hereford bulls.

The last batch finished had been housed for 40 days and during this period, gained 1.5kg/day.

The highest fat score of all the heifers finished so far has been 4- and there has only been two O- in total this year. More O- cattle are expected, however good genetics and correct feeding aims to minimise the number of O- grade heifers on the ABP Demo Farm.