All 173 of the spring-2024-born dairy-beef heifers reared on the ABP Demo Farm have now been slaughtered.

50 of these were finished at the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation's (ICBF's) Tully Progeny Test Centre in Co. Kildare and the remainder were finished on the ABP Demo Farm.

These heifers had an average carcass weight of 271kg.

The table below details the performance of the heifers by sire breed:

As well as the heifers, the first 90 steers have been slaughtered from the ABP Demo Farm, with the approximately 100 head of steers being finished at ICBF Tully to go in the next couple of weeks.

The first 90 steers slaughtered had an average carcass weight of 329kg at 20.5 months.

The farm manager said: "Their performance has been good this year and these have averaged 78 days on a finishing diet.

"This leaves us with 28 cattle on the Demo Farm still to be finished.

"These will be gone in the next couple of weeks allowing us to house the last few yearling cattle."

Yearling cattle performance

The first 163 of the January-2025-born dairy-beef cattle were housed on the ABP Demo Farm in November with an average housing weight of 266kg.

The protocol on the farm is to house the lightest of these first, leaving the heaviest ones the last to be housed.

Sean said the stronger ones are being housed now, and the weanlings/yearlings still at grass are running in batches of 35/40 head with ground conditions still relatively good.

"We will be starting to add beet and red clover silage to the diets of the housed cattle now that we are nearly at full capacity," Sean said.

Both of the GreenFeeds are in action in the shed with the weanlings measuring emissions.

"We plan to get all weanlings through the test period of 30 days over the winter," the farm manager explained.

The store lambs are thriving away at grass and have recently received a fluke dose and cobalt drench.

Concentrates will be introduced to the store lamb diet in the new year.