Counting the cost of rearing bull calves – €146 and I got €58/hd for them
We breathed a huge sigh of relief recently as we got a second clear TB test. This meant we were free to sell livestock again. All trading of cattle stopped on October 23 when we were restricted. That was a down period of almost 21 weeks.
Pressure was starting to mount on the calf housing in the last couple of weeks as up to 80 calves had to be looked after. Once the herd was de-restricted phone-calls were made and calf prices were negotiated.
A home sale is stress-free for me and the calf. Priority was the Friesian bull calves and there were only 10 for sale, thanks to the sexed semen and more selective beef breed usage.
In fact any Friesian bull calves I had came from the GeneIreland test bulls programme. Four of the bull calves were bought by a farmer and the other six went for export.
I have a Dundalk IT agriculture student with me for eight weeks on placement and one day we calculated how much the calves cost me each day since birth.
The cost per day roughly was milk at €2.70, meal €0.50, straw €0.50, water €0.30. Total €4 per day or €28 per week. The calves were being fed for averages of five weeks, so that is a grand total of €140 plus €6 for tagging — and that’s before you put a cost on labour.
Their sale value was an average of €58/hd, which I was glad to get. We hear of so many prices a lot less.
The calves were all well fed and well looked after, which is my policy because if you don’t feed properly, you definitely won’t have a saleable calf.
The beef calves are moving well too and with just two more Friesian bulls to sell, calf numbers are manageable once again.
No sooner is the calf born than our attention is turned to the imminent breeding season. This formed part of the debate at our discussion group meeting last week.
By this time next month,breeding will have begun on many dairy farms. At this stage bull teams should be selected as many of the sought-after bulls are scarce.
The take home message from the meeting was to “invest time in bull and cow selection to maximise your genetic gain”.
The sub-indexes that should be looked at are fertility, milk, health, carbon, maintenance, protein percentage, and kilogrammes fat and protein combined.
The ICBF sire advice programme is a great management tool for selecting bulls, provided you set the thresholds for individual bulls. The bull team we have selected for this year are all sexed. Their EBI average is €339, fertility €140, milk €117, health €14, carbon €7, maintenance €13, protein 0.21pc, 33kg fat and protein combined.
Selecting the bulls is half the job, selecting the cow is the other half. This too needs to be done in advance of breeding as mating start date comes quickly. Don’t wait till the AI technician is in the yard.
Initial selection for me is based on using sexed semen on females over €250 EBI and having no calving difficulties or fertility problems. In other words, to get around 20 replacements, 40 sexed straws are needed at 50pc conception rate.
I will use the GeneIreland genomic bulls as well, which equates to five bulls of seven straws each.
The major topic for the discussion group was the weather. The mood among farmers is as damp, dull and dreary as the weather. On many dairy farms, cows haven’t seen outdoors yet.
I can’t recall a year when cows didn’t get grazing in February and have only grazed for about seven days in March.
Very little fertiliser has been sown too. No slurry has been spread yet here either and with all tanks nearly full, pressure is coming on how to handle it.
It is getting late for spreading slurry on silage ground. Renting storage may have to be an answer. Each week we are living in anticipation that next week will be better, but this hasn’t happened since July.
If what has happened with our weather over the past nine months is climate change, then the principles of calendar farming are being greatly challenged.
‘If what has happened with our weather over the past nine months is climate change, then the principles of calendar farming are being greatly challenged’