Paula Hynes: Starting to Elevate the herd
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The farm went through dramatic changes when my husband Pete started farming; the calving pattern was tightened, AI was introduced and cows started doing more days at grass. I think we can all agree that large volumes of grass were a lot easier to grow ten years ago, but climate change and weather patterns have impacted that grass growth over the last few years.
The breeding season trundled along for 12 weeks a year for the last decade, and we then introduced some autumn-calvers two years ago as the girl's interest in showing grew. We took the decision 12 months ago to reduce the size of the spring calving herd, and the decision seemed to stand us well as the spring of 2024 was one of the worst we have seen from a weather perspective, and grass growth over the summer was hampered by weather again.
We also moved away from tail paint and used Datamars heat detection collars on all the cows. We had done our homework and knew the collars were very accurate, and we also got a superb backup service from the team at Datamars.
Our scanning technician, Ian Giles, visited this week to scan the main herd, and we were delighted with the results; the cows had an empty rate of 10%, which is slightly higher than in 2022 and 2023, but given how short our breeding season was this year, we feel the gamble has paid off.
Over 50% of the cows will calve in the first week of calving next spring. We have one cow carrying a set of Charolais twins and all other beef serves were also Charolais. We have two red and white Holstein cows in the herd, both of whom are in calf to the sexed semen of a Red Holstein bull, and another red-carrying cow has also been held to the same red Holstein serve.
We call her fringe as she has a big hairy fringe, I always think if she could make a Santa list it would surely include a GHD and a hairbrush, she always delivers a red calf, whether it is Angus, Hereford, Simmental or Charolais so hopefully, she will have a red Holstein heifer next spring.
We made the dramatic cut to the breeding season in order to ease the workload and also gain a little efficiency. It can be tiring calving in both the spring and the autumn, and while the first week of February will be full steam ahead with so much calving, the saving grace is that calving will be mostly finished by St Patrick's Day.
It is also questionable whether those late calvers in April actually earn their keep in a spring-calving system. The reality is they have missed out on eight or nine weeks of work compared to the majority of the herd and a late-born calf is always a harder sell and a little harder to rear with disease build up on the farm over the spring.
As farmers, we always need to tweak the system, and next spring, we will have a lot fewer heifer calves on the farm and possibly no surplus heifers to sell, but we will have a lot more beef calves, which we can move off the farm sooner and ease the workload little more.
I’m not overly worried about the high demand for grass early next February as we will most likely only graze the cows once a day on bigger blocks of ground and house at night time.
It worked well for us this spring as the cows did less damage to the ground, had a higher peak in lactation, and we also felt there was less opportunity for digestive upsets as cows had good fibre intakes due to nighttime housing and probably a more balanced diet.
We have been genotyping with the ICBF for a number of years now and have found it of huge benefit to the farm and our now in our second season being part of the DNA registration program. EBI really suits the grass-based cow.
We chose to also start genotyping using the Elevate program with Semex last autumn; we genotype heifer calves on this system by taking a small ear-notch tissue sample, which is then sent to the UK. To do this, we use an app that the calf's tag number is uploaded to, which corresponds with the DNA sample.
Results are directly uploaded to the app and updated on each evaluation. Our thought process on this is the same as genotyping in Ireland, as we use young genomic show bulls; the breeding decision is worthless if we don’t have the dam genotyped on the same system.
The Elevate program gives unique Immunity+ data which is the most accurate health data in the world, we also find the milk indexes and confirmation indexes very accurate on Elevate and it also includes the only methane index available in the world.
With such a huge focus on climate change and sustainability, it is crucial to keep an eye on methane indexes as early as possible, and while research will evolve over time, that is the same with any genotype index.
This week we sampled another batch of heifers and have sent their samples to the UK so it will be good to see the results come back before the end of the year, there are a few calves which look very promising for next show season so the confirmation indexes should confirm more. A decade does seem like a long time, but not in farming terms, and it may well be a case that we have a herd genotyped on two systems within that time frame.
