What is Thomas doing that is different?
Mike McCorry, Beef and Sheep Adviser, CAFRE, Ballyclare
This was just one of the areas of interest a recent benchmarking farm walk on the farm of Tom Moorhead, Aughafatten Co. Antrim. Farmers were shown how monitoring of costs and production can help lead to increased farm profits.
The Moorhead family farm, which is situated at the base of Slemish, carries 120 suckler cows and 150 early lambing ewes on 100 owned acres and 150 acres of conacre. An additional 150 acres of mountain grazes 40 beef cattle from May to September. The farm is in the top 10 percent of beef benchmarking standards.
The suckler herd is split into three groups:
- A group of 18 Simmental x Limousin cows is crossed with a high EBV maternal Simmental bull to produce female replacements. Most of the male calves from this group are intensively finished as bulls.
- A group of 40 Belgian Blue x Simmental cows is mated to a Euro-Angus bull and the calves from these are finished on the farm on a grass based system and sold to local meat company (GlenTender).
- The third group of approximately 60 Saler x and Limousin x cows is mated to a Charolais bull and a Parthenaise bull which Tom has recently purchased. The calves from these cows will mainly be sold as stores in the spring.
Two year old calving
Tom calves his heifers at 24 months of age. This has the benefit of reducing the number of batches of cattle on the farm, saves costs and enables him to keep a tighter calving period. Heifers are served in June and July at 65 percent of their mature body weight - 360-400 kg. To achieve these weights at service Tom believes it is critical to have the heifers gaining 0.6kg/day during their first winter and to be well grazed in their second year to gain 0.9kg/day.
About 50 percent of the calves are finished on the farm and the rest are sold as stores at 12 months.
On the night farmers were impressed with a pen of 17 continental beef bulls that were approximately 13 months of age which were almost ready for slaughter. These bulls have since been slaughtered and achieved average carcase weights of 343 kg, overall carcase gains from birth of 0.86 kg/day and graded 4E’s, 11U’s and 2R’s at fat class two and three.
Grassland Management
Tom has identified, through his benchmarking analysis, that the grassland management on the farm is an area where he can make definite improvements. He is keen to establish more white clover in his grazing swards to improve stock performance and save on Nitrogen costs. Last autumn he reseeded a four acre field with a red clover, white clover and perennial ryegrass seed mixture. This mixture has been successfully used at the Greenmount organic unit, CAFRE. Tom has cut this sward once for silage and intends to take another cut and then graze it in the autumn. He is pleased with the output from this sward with no Nitrogen inputs and intends to establish a larger area of this mixture in the future.
Beef and Sheep Benchmarking
Paul McHenry, CAFRE considered the costs of production in suckler herds and sheep flocks and the impact this has on profit per cow or per ewe.
He also discussed the new CAFRE ‘Beef and Sheep Business Challenge’ qualification which consists of three short courses covering, Benchmarking, Finance and Business Planning. The new ‘Focusing on Fertility’ short course which is aimed at improving fertility in the suckler herd was also outlined. Both these short courses will also be available to farmers in autumn 2009.
Tom out checking a batch of cows and calves, on his farm at Aughafatten, CoAntrim.
