The sustainability initiative offers farmers an additional 20c/kg price bonus on all eligible cattle.

The farm is one of ABP's eight Monitor Farms. These farms are owned by farmers who are supplying beef to ABP Food Group. These farms are finishing cattle in a variety of systems across the country on a range of different land types and are all involved in the processor’s sustainability initiative, the ‘Advantage Beef Programme’.

Calving season on John Twohig's dairy herd commenced on February 1, and well over half the herd has calved down by now. The calved cows are out both day and night currently.

All cows were served to Angus sires via Artificial Insemination (AI) last year.

The three Angus AI sires used were as follows:

Drumcrow Tribesman (AA8172);
HW Lord Horatio V538 (AA6682);
Coolrain Patriarch (AA5280).

His farm liaison officer is Aideen Bates from ABP who explained: "All three of these bulls are easy calving and have high carcass weight and carcass confirmation figures on the Dairy Beef Index (DBI).

She said: "John didn’t have any issues calving cows this year to date. In his own words he ‘didn’t have to touch one cow’. Along with the easy calving traits, these bulls are capable of producing nice solid calves to take to finish under 24 months." 

The calves are being reared on an automatic feeder and are getting 6L of milk/day. They are also offered an 18% calf starter crunch.

The calves will receive their intranasal vaccine in the coming days. The automatic feeder will begin to wean calves off milk at 70 days which makes for a stress-free transition off of milk.

No cows are served to Friesian bulls on the farm and replacement Friesian heifer calves are purchased in and reared alongside Angus calves. These heifer calves all have a high Economic Breeding Index (EBI) figure and are sourced from a herd with healthy, fertile, and highly-productive cows.

John has the majority of his 2023-born Angus heifers slaughtered at this stage and he is happy with their performance.

The average carcass weight came to 265kg on the heifers which is approximately the average carcass weight John aims for.

The remainder of finishing cattle are some lighter bullocks and heifers that were only started on a finishing diet in January to give them a chance to grow. They will be fit to go in the coming weeks. 

John is fattening cull cows at the moment too. These cows are on a finishing diet of 6kg beet, 5kg of a 30% maize meal nut and good-quality silage. They will start coming fit for slaughter in the coming weeks as well. 

John's yearling cattle have now also been turned out to grass. Concentrate feed was removed from the diet on February 1, to allow them time to adjust to a grass only diet for the duration of the grazing season.

These yearling cattle were weighed at turnout to grass to get an overview of their performance over the winter.

The grazing platform for the dairy herd received a slurry application in February via an umbilical slurry system. Thankfully, the Twohigs herd was clear in their recent Bovine TB test.