Teagasc’s Ballyhaise Agricultural College in Co. Cavan has published data on the key performance indicators (KPIs) of its suckler herd in 2025.

Teagasc beef specialist, David Argue explained that the college suckler herd consists of 40 continental type cows and operates on 26.9ha (66.5ac).

The herd starts calving in late January with most cows calved before first-year students go on work placement in mid-March.

The suckler cows on the farm range predominantly from the following breeds:

Limousin;
Simmental;
Charolais;
Salers;
Angus.

Explaining the system, manager of the suckler unit Noel Prunty said: “Male calves are finished as under-16-month bulls.

"Heifers are finished at 22 months and replacement heifers calve down at 24 months.

"Strong emphasis is placed on grassland management, with grass measured weekly, and on making top-quality silage for young stock.”

In 2025, the first-cut silage was harvested on May 11, and had a dry matter digestibility (DMD) of 75%.

The table below details the 2025 KPIs of the Teagasc Ballyhaise Agricultural College suckler unit:

A major focus is placed on improving genetics in the herd with a key focus on milk and fertility in breeding cows.

All replacements are bred from within the herd. Cows are artificially inseminated (AI) for the first 3-4 weeks of the breeding season.

“If a decent proportion of the cows have been AI’d or heat activity drops, we turn out a Charolais stock bull to keep six-week calving tight the following spring,” Noel explained.

Replacement heifers

Breeding for the replacement heifers usually starts two weeks later than the main herd and short gestation bulls are used.

Heifers are watched for seven days and any that have not shown signs of heat are synchronised and AI’ed to Angus and Saler sires with easy calving (<5% calving difficulty % >90% reliability).

The heifers are bred for just six weeks to ensure only the most fertile heifers are entering the herd and that they calve early in the spring.

When selecting cows to breed replacements, the previous year’s calf weaning weight is considered.

Only the highest-performing cows that achieve a daily liveweight gain on 1.2kgs/day for their heifer calves and 1.3kg/day for their bull calves are bred to replacement bulls.

Teagasc's Liam McWeeney added: “One of the main sub-indexes when selecting bulls for replacements is the milk sub-index followed by carcass weight with an overall replacement index of 4- or 5-star.

“We scanned all of the cows after nine weeks of breeding in 2025.”

Scratch cards and teaser bulls are used to aid heat detection. Any animal that is not showing signs of heat two weeks after the breeding season starts is scanned by the local vet.

Ballyhaise College suckler herd health

The main animal health focus areas are scour prevention in calves and pneumonia prevention in weanlings at housing.

Cows are vaccinated against scour 3–12 weeks prior to calving.

All calves get adequate, quality colostrum within two hours of birth to ensure absorption of antibodies.

The Ballyhaise suckler unit manager said: "We prepare calves for weaning and housing to ensure performance is maintained and stress minimised.

"This ensures calves have full immunity from mid-October when weaning generally starts."

Calves are given a worm dose to avoid any stomach or lung worm burdens around weaning.

Weaning takes place gradually starting off with the heifers being weaned first, followed by 7–8 cows/week until all are weaned.

Cows are usually housed at weaning time and calves are left outdoors with the un-weaned group.

Calves also receive clostridial vaccination while cows receive bovine viral diarrhoea (BVD) and lepto vaccines pre-breeding.

Weanling and beef carcass performance

Prunty explained: "Weanlings are weighed several times during the year to monitor performance.

“The female calves averaged 1.14kg/head/day with the top-performing calves achieving 1.44kg/head/day.

"First-calving heifers had a weaning efficiency rate (calf 200 day weight as % of cow weight) of 46% with the mature cows on target at 42%."

U-16 month bull beef at Ballyhaise College

Male calves are introduced to creep feeding in early September and are eating between 2–3kg/head/day by the end of October.

Cattle are generally housed in early November where the concentrate feeding rate is increased to 4kg/head/day, building up to 6kg/head/day by February 1.

At this point, the change over from a 16% weanling ration to a 13% finisher ration begins. The change over usually takes two-three weeks before they are completely on the finisher ration.

Once the change in diet is complete, animals are gradually moved onto an ad-lib diet of concentrates, silage and straw for finishing.

The young bulls averaged a daily lifetime gain of 1.55kg/head/day, with the top-performing bulls reaching 1.9kg/day in the finishing period.

The heifers graze good-quality grass in the second summer and are typically housed on October 1, before being introduced to concentrate feed for the finishing period.

Heifers are fed a diet of top-quality silage and 6kg/head/day of concentrates.

The heifers that were finished in spring 2026 had an average carcass weight of 358kg at 22 months-of-age with an average kill-out of 55.8%. All cull cows are finished on the farm.

McWeeney added: "We hope that we are demonstrating that high commercial performance and environmental sustainability can both be achieved on soils like ours.”