With technologies increasing on farms every year, on this week’s episode of the Beef Edge, John Heslin, MSD Animal Health Market Access and Marketing Manager, and part time beef farmer, gives his insights in advance of calving and breeding season.

John describes how he farms with his father in Co. Westmeath operating a suckling to store and sometime finishing system. With all family members involved it makes work-life balance easier as both John and his father also work off farm as well as John being on the football field for Westmeath and St Loman’s Mullingar, GAA.

John describes how having a calving camera is such an asset as he lives off-farm and his father lives on-farm and they both work. A calving camera allows them to keep an eye on the cows from their phone even if John is away with work.

He highlights that, to reduce labour due to sick calves, they will vaccinate cows pre-calving. Obviously, sire selection is an important factor to minimise calving difficulty, and the fact they use 100% AI, heat detection is an issue when it comes to AI, so John installed ‘SenseHub’ which sends alerts to his phone if the animal is sick or in heat.

Since 1st January 2022, all new cattle tags that farmers are ordering are electronic identification EID tags and from July all calves born will have to have EID tags, but John has been using EID tags for the past 2 years and discusses a number of benefits from using them.

For more episodes and information covered on the Beef Edge, visit the show page at:

https://www.teagasc.ie/thebeefedge

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