Farming really is a case of just hopping from one season to the next with little downtime in between.

This week, as an end was in sight for calving 2025, our attention quickly turned to calving 2026.

As per last week's update, 30 maiden heifers were put on a synch programme and Ai-ed on Thursday this week.

This was an eight-day programme which began on Wednesday last week.

Heifers require four visits to the crush within the eight days with the final visit (day eight) being the day of insemination.

Timing

Fifteen heifers received conventional semen while the remaining 15 received sexed semen, with the programme for both being the same apart from the timing of insemination with heifers receiving sexed straws being inseminated eight hours later than heifers receiving conventional semen.

The table below outlines the programme used.

Heifers receiving sexed semen where picked on three main criteria, weight, mother's performance and Eurostar index.

Only heifers above 400kg are selected for sexed semen. It’s generally the heaviest heifers in the bunch that have the best chances of going in-calf to sexed semen due to heifers most likely having reached puberty well before insemination and likely have had 2/3 oestrus cycles before being bred.

That being said, the weight of a heifer doesn’t always determine how good her ability to breed future females for the herd will be, her mother must have a history of good fertility and milk ability for heifers to be selected.

We also try to pick heifers with a high replacement index also; in theory these heifers should breed better replacements than lower index heifers, the average replacement index of our 2024-born heifers is €142, so finding heifers with suitable replacement index is not an issue.

However, heifers that have high index but are lighter than the desirable weight of 400kg or where mothers have not had a history of going in calf to first service are not selected.

Calving is more or less finished with two cows left to calve, despite these two cows being bred in the first week of July, they are in no hurry to get the job done. Signs are starting to show however and hopefully they will be calved within the week.

Heat and moisture

Grass growth has been slow on the farm up until this week, a lack of heat and moisture was somewhat prohibiting our ability to push up grass and made the turnout of cattle a little more stop/go rather than just opening the gates.

Farm cover sits at 640kg/dm/ha and growth rate has jumped to 45kg/day this week after soil temperatures reaching 11C and the farm receiving 43mm of rain so far, this week.

The opportunity was taken to spread fertiliser given the forecasted rain and 52 acres of first-cut silage where spread with 3.5 bags of 24-2.5-5 + sulphur/acre this week.

Twenty five acres of grazed ground received 40 units of urea to help drive on growth on the grazing block, with more due to be spread over the weekend.

Lambing

Lambing has almost came to an end this week with just two yearling hoggets left to lamb.

First-born lambs received their first clostridial vaccine this week along with a coccidiosis treatment.

The opportunity was also taken to footbath lambs in zinc sulphate solution to stem any early onset of scald, a small percentage of lambs presented symptoms of scald this week and the run through the footbath should prevent it becoming a major issue.

Night time temperatures are dropping to below 4C on the farm this week so precautionary measures are being taken against grass tetany in both lambed ewes and calved cows with high magnesium lick buckets available at grass.