For this week’s beef focus, Agriland paid a visit to a farm near Ballinahinch, Co. Tipperary, the village best-known as the set for the TV series Killinaskully.
Francis Bourke is a part-time suckler and calf-to-beef farmer finishing his cattle through ABP Food Group’s Advantage Beef Programme. He also works off-farm as a school teacher.
He said that his farm system can be described as “eclectic”, as it encompasses a mix of both sucklers and dairy calf to beef.
There are 25 suckler cows kept on the farm, and approximately 50 calves are purchased from the same dairy farmer every year.
Francis said: “The farm is about 170m above sea level. We are stocked at about 130kg N/Ha. The land is all in one block and is laid out in paddocks. There is a real mixture of soil and land type. About two-thirds of the farm is heavy, gley soil and one-third of the land is drier, clay soils.”
Due to the heavier soil-type, priority is given to getting lighter stock out to grass first in the spring. “This year, yearlings went out to grass on February 4, and were housed on October 27 this year.”
The farm predominantly grows grass however Francis has sown red clover which is used for silage. Peas and oats were grown this year also, for winter feed and these were under-sown with grass.
The sucklers
Francis said: “The sucklers is a simple system. The cow must go in calf, calve on her own and the calf must get-up-and-go, and that’s the foundation breeding principles.”
“If you have fertile cows that are doing that, you have more calves on the ground. You might lose a bit in live weight gain but if you don’t have to intervene, you have a thriving calf from the word go.”
Cows calve outdoors from April 1, and Francis aims for a compact calving season. This year, calving started on April 1 and finished on May 9.
“The calf is handled in the first few days for tagging, and all bulls are banded for castration as calves.”
Subject to weather, cows are let out around St. Patrick’s day, or 2-3 weeks before calving to exercise and loosen out.
Cattle handling facilities on the farm:
“A cow that has had exercise before calving is going to be a fresher, livelier cow and should deliver a livelier calf.
“They go out onto a bare paddock that I’m going to be reseeding and are fed hay. It has worked well for the past six years with minimal losses.”
Francis said: “The cow type on the farm here is a Dana special – all kinds of everything,” he laughed.
“All cows were bred here bar three Aubrac cows that came in from the calf-to-beef system. I’m using them as a foundation cow for the future.
“15-years-ago, this farm was milking and we then moved into sucklers, but we bred our stock through. Six generations of people have been breeding cattle on this farm for the past 140 years at least. We never cleared out and every year, there have been calves born on this farm.
“There’s no farmer that doesn’t enjoy seeing a cow calving and the calf get-up-and-go, and take great pride in that.
“Limousin and Angus-cross genetics were the foundation cows bred-off the dairy herd. We then moved to Salers and lately Aubracs, and they have found a nice niche in the herd.
“The Aubracs are easy calving, great carcass weight and confirmation and they’re ticking so many boxes. Let’s just say, they weigh like lead.”
For breeding, 4-5 replacement heifers along with 5-6 of the best cows in the herd are selected for Artificial Insemination (AI), and the rest of the cows go to the stock bull. Breeding generally starts on June 21.
“I tail paint my cows and do a lot of heat detection. Twice a day, I check them and keep the paint topped up. When moving them from a paddock, I run them through the crush and top-up the tail paint .
“Knowing your calving dates is vital. If you have your serving dates, it’s a great help. Those little thing make life easier.
“Calving coincides with Easter generally. Any trouble cases get the road, and through time, you develop a herd of cows that can calve naturally.
“This year, we had over 70% of cows calve in the first three weeks,” he said.
Calf-to-beef
“My dairy calves come from one herd only and a real relationship has been built up with that farmer. He shows interest in how the calves perform and calls here to view the cattle from time-to-time.”
Francis recently invested in a robotic calf feeder.
He is happy with how the calves have been performing on the feeder and said “calves done better on the automatic feeder this year. Anyone rearing more than 30 calves/year should consider it. The feeder will rear 70 claves. I reared 50 on it this year but I would say 60 is an ideal number.”
Advantage beef
Francis signed up to ABP‘s initiative in 2022. It offers beef farmers a 20c/kg sustainability bonus. After hearing about the initiative, he then asked Shane Butler from ABP Nenagh for more information about the scheme.
“I looked at the Advantage scheme and I was ticking all the boxes already and I said ‘why don’t I just take the 20c/kg’. I done a quick calculation it works out at near €4,000 extra for me to finish 60 head of stock through the advantage scheme.
“Amie Coonan from the Advantage team called out and looked at my farm system and said it was suitable so we took it from there.
“Most of my cattle are finished in the shed from January to April. The average age at slaughter for the heifers is 23.9 months and for the bullocks is 25.4 months.
This year, the dairy-bred heifers had an average carcass weight of 290kg. The suckler-bred heifers had an average carcass weight of 315kg. The dairy-bred steers had an average carcass weight of 324kg and the suckler-bred bullocks had an average carcass weight of 377kg.
“The cattle which I think will not finish in the shed go back to grass for a June-July finish.
“This year, cattle weights at housing were back 25kgs on other years which will have to be compensated for over the winter.”
Looking to the future, Francis hopes to grow his cattle numbers slightly and continue to improve the performance and efficiency of his suckler and calf to beef operations.