Grass quality took a hit here in Abbeyleix in the last week or two. Before the rain arrived, the swards were under stress with the dry spell, and unfortunately, that left quality lacking when we did eventually get moisture. We’ve had about 60mm of rain over the past couple of weeks, which has helped kick things back into gear. Growth has picked up and I’m hopeful that quality will improve again on the next grazing round.

Average daily growth for the last week was 87kg DM/ha, comfortably ahead of demand at 65kg, and farm cover stands at 531kg DM/ha, or 140kg/cow. While this puts the farm in a solid feed position, quality remains the key concern for the next grazing round.

To try and stay ahead of quality issues, I’ve been pre-mowing the last few paddocks. That’s helped tidy things up, and I’m aiming to have leafy regrowths for the next time around

One issue I noticed last week was that paddocks weren’t lasting as long as I’d expected. Visually, there seemed to be a fair bit of grass, but once the cows went in, they were clearing them faster than anticipated.

The swards were hard to judge – not very dense at the base, likely another knock-on effect from the dry spell. Thankfully, we’re now getting the correct number of grazings again, and things are settling.

Despite the earlier drop in grass quality, the cows have held up well. Since the rain came, milk yields have bounced back over the 27l mark. Milk solids are holding strong too – protein is running between 3.70% and 3.85%, while butterfat has been between 3.90% and 4.55%. Somatic cell count (SCC) is steady around 100,000, which I’m happy with at this stage.

On the silage ground, I decided to go out with 2,000gal/ac of slurry first. After all the rain I felt I would get good use out of it.

I followed up with four bags/ac of 19:0:15 and the plan is to cut that ground in mid-July, all going well.

We’re also preparing the other silage block for reseeding this week. It was sprayed off last week. We are giving it three passes with the disc, followed by two with the power harrow and then a roll.

To counteract any acidity issues from the breakdown of the old sward, I’ll be applying three bags/ac of gran lime. It will also get 3.5 bags/ac of 10:7:25 to get it up and running.

Breeding-wise, things are looking promising – at least with the cows. We’re into week seven now, and they seem to have held well to first service. Scanning is due next week, so I’ll know more then, but visually things look positive.

The heifer side, however, has been a different story altogether – almost a disaster to be honest.

We had only about 15% hold to first service using sexed semen and CIDRs.

I’d left enough straws with the contract rearer for around a 50% conception rate, but when the repeats started coming in, he ran short and had to turn in the bull.

Then he was unsure if the bull was working – he hadn’t seen much activity – so I ended up going down with more straws and we now have a chin-ball harness on the bull to keep tabs on him.

We will AI for a third round now, just to be safe. It’s been a frustrating run, but we’ll know where we stand after this round.

The poor results are hard to understand as conditions at the time of AI were near perfect, with great weather and plenty of nice grass ahead of the heifers.

I know of other farmers who have experienced similar problems with conception rate with sexed semen in heifers this year so maybe it’s an area that needs further investigating.