Strong growth rates continue this week, which means we have abundance of grass, particularly on one farm that is usually cut for silage and grazing sheep.

Our demand for grass drops off rapidly at this time of year as we continue to kill bullocks and lambs.

With all this grass, my thoughts are turning to utilising it more efficiently. I would usually be tempted to go for a third cut but with plenty of silage already conserved I don’t want the expense of making additional silage.

So I now intend buying some stores earlier this year, and perhaps lighter, to utilise more efficiently the grass I already have and put on some weight cheaply before housing.

For example, if I buy a store bullock at 430 kgs and give €2.30 per kilo that animal will cost be €990. He will be turned out onto good quality after grass and conservatively gain 0.7kg of liveweight per day at little to no cost.

This means he should potentially put on 55 kgs by housing in the middle of November.

Savings

This is in comparison to purchasing a 480 kgs store in November to go straight into the shed at €2.30 per kilo at a cost of €1,105. Potentially there is a big saving to buying earlier and doing what we can do efficiently on our dry farm.

However, a trip to the mart at the weekend saw me come home empty handed. The turnout of good quality stores was low and it was evident that an excellent grazing summer in the west of Ireland is allowing farmers to hold onto stores for longer than normal.

But as we move into September the turnout of cattle at the mart usually increases so it’s a patience game.

Store lambs

I am pondering with the idea of buying some store lambs but I have had quite a chequered affair with them in the past. I find with every good year with stores lambs, there is three bad years.

My intention this year is to buy good quality ewe lambs and keep them until the spring time and if lamb prices are good I’ll kill them and, if not, they will be kept for breeding next year.

My own lambs are performing well on the reseed and average daily gain is approximately 200g per day. I have raised my live weight for killing to 46kgs as I found the kill out was poor up until now.