Paula Hynes: It's crucial to weigh before you load up the trailer these days

All the calves are treated the same way on our farm, whether they are bulls, heifers or beef calves, writes Cork dairy farmer Paula Hynes.

A calf being weighed on the Hynes farm.

It has been a hectic week on the farm this week with lots of new arrivals. The ladies must have decided that it was a good idea for a big group of them to calve together, knowing our staff was going to be halved. 

All the calves are doing well, thank God. Attention to detail is imperative now to ensure they all stay healthy when there are so many of them now. 

The first group of Charolais bull calves moved onto their new home during the week - a returning customer, which is always great. She will be returning to collect another few when they are old enough. 

We had another farmer contact us during the week from up the country looking for Charolais heifers, so it was fantastic to be able to sell them directly from the farm again.

Hopefully, this farmer will return again next year; the important thing for us is always to sell a strong healthy calf. We prefer to hold onto caves until they are at least three to four weeks old. 

We originally tried holding calves for six weeks, but the workload became so great on the farm, and with a backlog of animals, that time frame seemed to increase disease build-up, and four weeks is a lot more manageable.

We are subscribed to the National Genotyping Program now anyway, so the time frame of that means a calf is three to four weeks of age before data is returned to us.

All the calves are treated the same way, whether they are bulls, heifers or beef calves, with every calf getting precision microbes every day. 

Precision Microbes is a probiotic liquid solution for calves to ensure calves achieve optimal gut function and overall health. It is extremely beneficial for the treatment of scour in calves as well; that was the reason we started using it in the first place, and now every calf gets it. We keep an eagle eye on calves, and any calf seen off form in any way receives a second daily dose of precision microbes until it returns to full health

The workload for Pete and me has significantly increased with our French veterinary student, Valentine, returning to college after being with us for three weeks, and now our daughter Becky is heading back to the UK to prepare for the Borderway UK Dairy Expo in the middle of March. 

I will fly over with our youngest, Georgie, and meet Becky and her pal Molly in Carlisle at the show. Valentine and Becky are a huge loss, but it's like everything you must just get a system going and stick to it the best you can, and as cows calve at a rapid pace early in calving season, there comes a stage where calf numbers on farm rapidly decrease as well. 

We had a lovely mix of calves born this week with Charolais, Holstein and two more beautiful jersey heifers, one sired by Avonlea Chocochip and the other by Dulet Bowlers; they are just so cute and have amazing personalities and are full of mischief from the get-go. 

Georgie is great at helping out after school. She has great patience with the calves, and believe me, you need it sometimes when you come across a really stubborn one. Whenever I am looking for her, I will always find her sitting in the straw pens with some calf or another. She has a few favourites picked out already.

The most important thing on the farm in the spring is the weighing scales. We weigh all the calves at birth and then every week to see what progress they are making. 

It's a great way to keep track of the weekly weight gain, and you can input all the weights into an app on your phone. Looking at the mart reviews, you have no business taking Fr bull calves to the mart under 55kg. For example, Fr bulls at a local mart this week who weighed 50kg made €35 and ones who weighed 47kg only made €5.

We did take some into the mart this week along with two Charolais weanlings, Ours weighed over 70kg and they made €95. The second group of calves weighed 58kg and sold for €15 each but with over 1,200 calves at the mart, it would seem now that anything under 65kg is going to be a hard sell.

I doubt we will take any calf under 70kg to the mart going forward. It's like every year, good strong, healthy calves will sell. Don't get me wrong, it's never going to cover the cost of the calf, but at least it's better than €5 or no bid at all. I really do prefer to sell direct from the farm and, thankfully, have built up some amazing customers who return yearly.

There is plenty of work being done alongside the calving, with a couple of this year's show heifers starting their training. Becky had been busy halter training, washing and clipping before she left so it's up to us here to keep some of the training up while she is away. 

Georgie is a great help; she will work away with the younger heifers, and I'll hopefully keep the slightly older ones on track. I always love to take a moment during the day and have a chat with last year's girls when I'm feeding them, they still love the attention and the snuggles and scratches and we will be looking forward to taking them back to the show ring once they calve down. 

It's hard to believe we are back at the show prep already seems like only yesterday the gang were up at the Winter Fair in Belfast.