Cattle weighing available in every county now

You can’t manage what you don’t measure. Unless you measure something, you don’t know if it is getting better or worse.

Last winter, Teagasc and the ICBF measured winter daily gain on 18 farms in weanlings fed silage and meals. On five farms, steers gained less than 0.2kg of liveweight per day over a 100-day period. Instead of putting on the targeted 60kg (0.6kg per day), they put up less than 20kg. The average daily gain was 0.38kg for steers, and 0.39kg for heifers. All 18 farms were feeding meal.

How did your weanlings do last winter? If you didn’t weigh them at the start and the end of the winter you cannot answer that question. Without weighing, would you notice the difference between a 0.2 and 0.6kg daily gain? All the farmers with the poorly performing weanlings last winter were surprised at the poor results of the weighings.