Located in Bandon, Co. Cork, John Twohig is a dairy and beef farmer who supplies his beef cattle to ABP Food Group through the processors’ Advantage Beef Programme.
The farm is also one of the eight ABP Monitor Farms that are finishing cattle in a variety of systems and are based across the country on a range of different land types.
The good spell of weather in September has been a welcome arrival on Twohig’s farm and thankfully, grass is plentiful, cows are milking well and the drystock have been thriving this month.
Twohig has got a satisfactory in-calf rate from his herd of cows with 71 out of 80 cows scanned in calf. All cows were bred to artificial insemination (AI) this year.
Cows were pregnancy tested through milk recording and the empty cows will be milked on and once dried off, will be fattened.
While September has been a relatively positive month on the farm, the consequences of the late spring this year are apparent on cattle weights.
The heavier cohort of 2023-born dairy-beef bullocks had an average weight of 535kg on September 1, with heifers averaging 390kg.
The average weight of the beef cattle on the farm is approximately 20kg (live weight) behind previous years, and this trend is also apparent in his dairy-beef heifer weights.
Twohig plans to draft the heaviest cattle at housing and feed them accordingly for finishing. He is aiming to finish heifers when they reach a minimum of 520kg live weight, with a target of keeping heifer carcass weights above 260kg.Â
The 2023-born cattle are now on their final grazing rotation and will be housed in mid-October – weather permitting.
Twohig operated a leader-follower system for grazing this year where the yearling cattle cleaned up grass after the calves but he believes it didn’t pay any dividends.
For the 2025 grazing season, Twohig plans on managing grazing, so fresh grass will be provided to both yearlings and calves at all times.
The 2024-born calves were weighed on September 1 and the heavier bunch had an average weight of 215kg, with the lighter batch averaging 185kg.
This year’s calves are currently getting 2kg/head/day of an 18% ration.
Twohig has an innovative method of feeding meal to the calves at grass. A meal bin is kept in a flatbed trailer and he takes the empty bin and trailer to the co-op to be filled as needed.
The trailer can be moved from field-to-field easily, as the calves are moved to fresh paddocks.
The Cork farmer plans to continue feeding 2kg of concentrates/head/day during the winter to the lighter stock, as well as incorporating 3kg/head/day of beet.
The heavier calves will get 1kg/head/day of the same ration, along with beet throughout the winter.
Twohig will take silage samples in the coming weeks to assess the quality and feeding value of the silage he cut, and using the silage test results, he will decide what silage is best suited to the nutritional needs of the different batches of stock on the farm.
The silage test results will also help him to determine how much beet and meal to feed to his weanlings, finishing stock, and cows.
Next year, Twohig is planning to retain his later-born calves in the shed for a longer period of time – a trial that proved effective on the ABP Demo Farm this year.
The aim of keeping the calves housed for longer post weaning off milk is to help prevent bouts of summer scour that the farm has seen in later-born calves in recent years.
Twohig managed to secure a third cut of silage a few weeks back. The cut yielded eight bales/ac which he was happy with.
The silage ground received 30 units of protected urea since, and no slurry. The last of the slurry was put out in recent days on the milking platform.