Farm manager Sean Maher explained that of the 419 calves bought-in on the farm this spring, only three were lost in the rearing period and attributed this low mortality rate to both the kinder weather conditions this spring as well as good calf care and management.

There are currently 411 calves at grass with five smaller reared calves housed.

In previous years, summer scour was an issue on the farm but a new post-weaning strategy was implemented last year which to date has thankfully eliminated cases in calves during their first season at grass.

Maher attributes the elimination of summer scour cases to calves spending longer times in the shed post weaning.

He said: "We looked back to calves that were getting summer scour syndrome and it was the last calves to go to grass every year.

"So when we looked back on the figures, our first batch of calves were spending about 35-40 days in the shed after coming off milk, that was largely down to the time of year and weather conditions.

The system on the ABP Demo farm is a 19-month-heifer beef and a 20-month-steer beef system.

Achieving peak performance at all stages is essential on the ABP Demo Farm.

On average daily live weight gain, Maher said for the milk feeding period, the farm is averaging 0.65kg/day.

He said: "Calves come in at around 55-60kg, being weaned at about 90-95kg and turned out to grass at 120kg."

On carcass performance, the farm manager said: "Over the last few years, the good with the bad, we have been averaging 275kg carcass weight for our heifers at 19 months-of-age and our steers, about 325kg carcass weight at 20 months."

50 of the spring 2023-born heifers went to the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) progeny test centre in Tully, Co. Kildare last month for performance recording during their finishing stage. The remaining spring 2023-born heifers on the farm were housed for finishing earlier this week.

100 steers will go to Tully in September for performance recording and the remaining steers will be housed on the ABP Demo Farm for finishing.

Commenting on the Commercial Beef Value (CBV), the farm manager said it is "a relatively new tool available to dairy calf-to-beef farmers and we are recommending our farmers to keep it in mind when buying calves".

A 10ac paddock was reseeded last week on the farm. This had been growing lower yields of grass despite having optimum soil fertility and so was sprayed off, disked, sowed, and rolled.

It was reseeded with a grass-clover mix and a further 20ac will be reseeded on the farm in the coming weeks.

The ABP Demo Farm is currently involved in a trial with University College Dublin (UCD) where a 32ac plot of ground has two different sward types. 16ac is grown in a multi-species sward (MSS) and 16ac is grown in a perennial ryegrass (PRG) sward. There are a batch of Angus and Hereford steers with thee same weight at turnout allocated to each sward type.

Maher said: "Both batches of cattle look good but there is a big fertiliser saving on the MSS sward. It has only got two fertiliser applications this year versus the PRG sward that has got six fertiliser applications.

Approximately 600 store lambs will be bought in this autumn as when the older cattle are housed for finishing, the grass demand falls off significantly. These store lambs are then finished the following March and "fit in well to the system on the demo farm".

If farmers want to learn more on calf rearing, are looking for advice on getting started or if the ABP farm liaison team can help with any issues, farmers can contact Maher by e-mail at [email protected].

Stay tuned to Agriland for further updates from the ABP Demo Farm and the Advantage Beef Programme.