Autumn calving?

[organicguy]

@Slowcow we are doing the same, due to a dry farm making spring/summer grass challenging. TB makes buying and selling difficult.
Here's my approach...

- For cows already in the correct block (say calving Aug to Oct) breed hard to sexed, then stragglers to beef.
- Stop serving Feb/March before turnout, so we get a xmas break.
- Serve all spring calvers to beef only (or in my case beef bulls) for 12 weeks (May to July), then have a Summer break.
- Weigh and target-feed heifer calves to push them on or hold them back to fit the Autumn and Spring blocks, again using sexed semen for Autumn and beef for Spring.

Means running split block for a couple of years and by year 3 I'll have something resembling a main autumn block and small spring block.

I'm year 2 now, no calvings in July/Aug this year, calving profile becoming quite "peaky".

Good luck.

Spilt blocks are the work of the devil, few of the advantages of Block calving and most of the disadvantages of AYR.
Been there, got the T shirt.

 

[crashbox]

Thanks for all the input, yesterday I wasn't going to call the ai for cows until next year, then like someone try to quit fags it's one more time as the last of my 1st calvers came bulling last night!
So after today.......

I know the feeling, pondering whether to put any of my spring heifers to black and white, in case the ministry fancies taking a few...

 

[crashbox]

Spilt blocks are the work of the devil, few of the advantages of Block calving and most of the disadvantages of AYR.
Been there, got the T shirt.

Agreed, for us it's a medium term measure to get around buying and selling large numbers of cows...