Content developed in collaboration with Agriland Media as part of the ICBF & Agriland 2025 Commercial Beef Value Series.
Farming approximately 130ac of both owned and rented land near Clerihan outside Clonmel in Co. Tipperary, Michael O’Donnell has been in a dairy calf to beef production system for the past four years.
His system involves the purchase of approximately 130 autumn and spring-born calves every year. The calf breeds on the farm are predominantly Hereford, Angus, with some continental breeds also.
Every year, Michael aims to improve the genetic beef potential of the calves he is buying in an effort to improve his margins when selling beef cattle.
Michael purchases all his calves off his sister’s dairy farm and is involved with the selection of the sires used to produce his dairy beef progeny.
He said: “Last spring, before the AI started on my sister’s farm, we picked high Dairy Beef Index (DBI) bulls so we could produce a stronger calf for my system over here.”
These calves are currently being born on their origin dairy farm and will arrive to Michael’s farm in a couple of week’s time. Michael said: “The calves look really strong and I’m really happy with them.”
The dairy herd that the calves are sourced from is fully genotyped which is beneficial for Michael rearing these calves for beef production as he gets “all the information, all the sire details for all those calves when they come to the farm”.
“The CBV is a good tool, it does help, because you can’t [visually] tell the difference between a poor CBV calf and a high CBV calf at three weeks of age.”
Farmers who buy calves at the mart can use the ICBF mart tracker to identify high CBV calves.
All calves reared on Michael’s farm are brought to beef and are slaughtered at ABP Cahir.
With more calf to beef farmers realising the value of the CBV when sourcing calves, Michael believes that it will also benefit dairy farmers selling calves because it will help dairy farmers to verify they are producing good calves. He said: “There will be issues selling poor CBV calves on farms in future”.
Michael is currently finishing his heifers at 21 months of age on average and the bullocks at 23 months of age on average.
“Hopefully with the better quality calves that we’ll be able to get on the farm here, we’ll be able to shorten those times and have higher kill-out rates,” he said.
“When the calves come here, I transition them from a bit of haylage, onto silage.
“They’re coming here after their 70 days so I try and get them on silage as quick as I can. They’re on 2kg/head/day of a 17% nut. I currently weigh calves once a month just to see how they’re doing and they seem to be thriving well this year,” he added.