This spring's calves will be introduced to creep feed from next week on the farm.

ABP Food Group's Advantage Beef Programme farm liaison officer Sean Cassidy recently visited the farm to discuss Wesley's herd management plans for the autumn.

The farm is one of the ABP Monitor Farms finishing cattle in a variety of systems and based across the country on a range of different land types.

The dry spell did cause some grass-supply challenges on Browne's farm with supplies running tight in recent weeks.

However, the farm received a decent level of rain in the last few days, which has greened-up fields again and should push on the grass growth. 

Despite the dip in grass growth, cows and calves are still performing well.

One batch of cows have been scanned with good in-calf rates.

A few of the empty cows have been added to the cull cow mob, which have been housed in recent weeks to help with grass availability.

These cull cows will now be put on a finishing diet for slaughter.

The plan is to start creep-feeding calves from next week onwards to reduce both calf dependency on the cow and stress on calves at weaning time.

Weanlings will receive a broad vaccination programme this year as there was some coughing issues in the shed last autumn.

To help counteract this ahead of this winter, Browne is vaccinating for:

Infectious Bovine Rhinotracheitis (IBR);
Coronavirus;
Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and Parainfluenza type 3 (Pi3);
Mycoplasma Bovis.

Calves will also be treated with a lungworm dose and will all be weighed at weaning. 

Bull beef

The 2025 born under-16-month bulls are nearly all finished with only nine bulls remaining.

These nine are fit for slaughter and will be booked in over the coming days.

The bulls have performed well on the finishing diet but carcass weights are slightly behind on last year with an average carcass weight of 407kg to date this year.

These bulls are being fed 10kg concentrates/head/day during the finishing period.

The final cuts of silage will be taken off the farm over the coming weeks to prepare for the coming winter.