As one farming year draws to a close and another begins, Agriland caught up with ABP Food Group’s Advantage Beef Programme farm liaison officer, Sean Maher, to take a look back at 2023 on the ABP Demo Farm.
Sean said: “2023 was an eventful year for farming, and the Demo Farm was no different. From the ups and downs of calf rearing to reseeding heartaches and everything in between.
“Farmers have had to put up with a tough spring, short periods of drought, and then into the wettest summer and autumn in a number of years.
“Farmers often don’t get enough credit for how resilient they are, and I think 2023 was as testing a year that there has been in some time.”
Calves
The first calves arrived on the ABP Demo Farm in mid-February but the largest majority “were slow to come through, as they are every year”.
“We place particular emphasis on getting as many early-born calves in as possible, as we feel these are the ones that suit the system best, and are often our best performers,” Sean said.
The average arrival weight of the calves for this spring was 58kg, 3kg back on last year and also calves were four days younger, arriving at 27 days.
Commenting on how the calf rearing went, Sean said: “This year’s rearing went relatively well, with no major trouble.
“Anyone that rears calves knows how fickle the game can be. You constantly have to be on your ‘A game’.”
This year, calves on the ABP Demo Farm consumed an average of 27kg milk replacer/head. Sean said this volume was “up on last year” but he noted “we did get a bundle of stronger calves that didn’t spend that many weeks on milk in 2022”.
The average period on milk this year was 45 days with an average daily gain (ADG) of 0.7kg.
“This is satisfactory performance but we feel we can do better. Weaning weights were steady at 87kg, up 2kg on last year,” he added.
Grazing
Sean commented: “The transition to grass is one of the most important events in a dairy calf to beef system.
“The calves on the demo farm were eating 3kg concentrate/day before going to grass where they were brought back down to 1kg.”
The average turnout this year was June 6, with the last calves going to grass on June 26.
“We are having some difficulty with the last couple of batches going to grass. These calves are often turned out just a few days after weaning, and the sudden diet change can upset them. This is something we are examining, and looking at how we can improve.”
Yearlings
“Summer grazing was definitely a struggle. We had to cope with a difficult spring, a few weeks of drought and then rain from July 1 onwards.
“Cattle definitely didn’t put on the weight they should have,” he said.
The average turnout weight of the 2022-born yearling cattle was 348kg.
There were 150 yearling cattle turned out to grass at the end of February with the balance turned out the first week of April. “By that time, silage stocks were running low,” Sean added.
ADG from grass were behind on previous years, with the 2022 cattle housed for finishing at 450kg for heifers and 528kg for steers.
2023-born calves had an average housing weight of 245kg on November 19 “which was quite good”, Sean said.
In 2022, the calves had an average weight of 238kg on November 7.
“We’ve done well to keep them at grass for so long this year. The finishing cattle took extra days to finish and this put our system under pressure, but thankfully between the weather improving, splitting groups of calves and giving them extra space in paddocks, we managed to keep the last calves out until the first week of December.”
Grass growth
From a grass growth perspective, the farm averaged 11t DM/ha. The top paddock grew 17t DM/ha whilst the bottom paddock grew just over seven tonnes DM/ha.
“We are very happy with grass-growth levels this year, particularly after having a substantial amount of ground taken out for reseeding.
“Quality and utilization are incredibly important in dairy calf to beef systems. Grazing pressure is usually over the summer months when grass growth is at its highest.
“Keeping quality grass in front of calves and yearlings was difficult this year, but we achieved this through taking excess paddocks out for silage.
“Silage stocks are bound to be virtually empty in the country after last spring and so we want to make sure we’ll have enough to get us through this winter, whenever it may end,” Sean said.
Winter feed
The farm made just over 200 bales of red clover silage in 2023. Nine acres were sown in 2022 to replace the other nine acres which came out of production.
“Quality and preservation are good and we’ve began feeding it to the 2023 weanlings.
“This red clover has allowed us to reduce our protein levels in concentrates to 14.5%, an excellent result which should save us money whilst not reducing performance,” he said.
Protein levels are coming in at 16.5% on average with dry matters at 33% for the red clover silage.
“Red clover is a great source of protein, but it must be partnered with a high DMD silage, as its energy and starch levels can be low.”
Reseed
“Our reseed this year summed up 2023. Starting with the best of intentions but was quickly brought back to earth by mother nature.
“We began preparing the seedbed in April and it was sown in late May. It sat without rain for five weeks, until it got five weeks worth of rain in the space of 20 minutes.
The photos below show the damage caused by the short-spell of torrential rain:
“As it was sown on a steep hill, some of the soil ran off the field which destroyed reseed. We dusted ourselves off and tried again, re-sowing at the end of June. We had a couple of heavy showers a couple of weeks post-establishment, but other than that, it has been a success.
“We got two rounds of grazing on the field before closing it up early so it will be ready for the coming spring,” Sean explained.
The seedbed was prepared again and the reseed was sown secondly:
“ABP recently launched a project in conjunction with UCD and BiOrbic. This will see our reseed (sown in multi species and ryegrass plots for comparison) compare the effects of sward-type on cattle performance, sward DM growth, water quality and farm profitability.
“The sward will also serve to create a blueprint, which can be scaled to commercial farms in Ireland and further afield,” he said.
Slaughter performance
From a slaughter performance perspective, Sean said the 2022-born cattle “done quite well”.
The table below gives a breakdown of the steer and heifer kill-out performance in both 2023 and 2022:
Steers 2023 Heifers 2023 Steers 2022 Heifers 2022 Average carcass weight 320kg 270kg 318kg 275kg Average carcass conformation O+ O+ O+ O+ Average carcass fat 3= 3=/3+ 3=/3+ 3=/3+ Kill-out % 51% 50% 52% 51%
The heifers had an average carcass weight of 270kg which was back 5kg on last year’s heifers, while the steer carcass weight is up 2kg to 320kg, albeit at a slightly older slaughter.
The table below gives a breakdown of the dairy-beef heifer kill-out performance by breed for this year:
Breed Avg. carcass weight Avg. carcass conformation Avg. carcass fat AAX 264 O+ 3+ AUX 264 O+ 3= BBX 300 R= 3- HEX 271 O+ 3+ LMX 271 R- 3= Average 270 O+ 3=/3+
As the table above indicates, the Belgian Blue dairy-beef heifers had the highest average carcass weight and confirmation grade.
The table below gives a breakdown of the dairy-beef steer kill-out performance by breed for this year:
Breed Avg. carcass weight Avg. carcass fat Avg. carcass conformation AAX 314 3= O+ AUX 327 3- O+ BBX 335 3- R- FR 314 3= O- HEX 318 3= O+ LMX 325 3- R- Average 320 3= O+
Again with the 2022-born dairy-beef steers slaughtered this year, the Belgian Blues had the highest carcass weight, closely followed by Limousin.
ABP Demo Farm sheep performance
There are 600 head of store lambs currently on the farm. The smallest of these lambs are now receiving concentrates.
The lambs are currently 40kg on average and the target slaughter weight is 50kg with the aim of a 22-23kg carcass. Last year, lambs spent 217 days on the farm with an average slaughter date of mid-March.
Last year, in conjunction with Sheep Ireland and Irish Country Meats (ICM), two five-star Suffolk rams were purchased and placed with two separate commercial sheep flocks in Kerry.
These are farms which traditionally the Demo Farm would purchase store lambs from.
Some of these lambs are currently on the ABP Demo Farm now and their performance will be monitored versus lambs from conventional sires.
This year, the project went a step further and purchased three more five-star rams.
One Suffolk ram was placed on the same farm as the previous year with the other two heading to farms finishing their own lambs.
“We’re very proud to be involved in this project with ICM and Sheep Ireland. Genetics has a very important role to play in achieving our economic and environmental sustainability goals.”
ABP Demo Farm visitors
Sean continued: “We welcomed many visitors to the demo farm this year. We had over 30 groups visit us and these farm visits culminated in our ABP supplier open day at the end of July.
“There were over 250 people in attendance where we heard about genetics, multi species swards, cattle finishing principles and general animal health.
“The research on the demo farm is worthless unless we can disseminate it to our farmers and the greater public,” he said.
Concluding, Sean said: “From all at the team at the ABP demo farm, we would like to wish everyone a happy and safe Christmas and prosperous New Year.”