Last Wednesday, the Irish Farmers Journal travelled to Donegal for a farm walk with 2025 Foyle Meats Dairy Farmer and Finisher Commercial Beef Value (CBV) award winner Ryan McElhinney.
Ryan farms just outside Letterkenny, milking 140 high EBI cows and bringing all beef cattle through to finish alongside 120 ewes.
The farm walk was jointly run by Foyle Food Group, Teagasc and ICBF, showcasing how Ryan is breeding high CBV to maximise farm profitability.
Teagasc adviser Tommy Doherty opened the night and gave a rundown of Ryan’s system. He briefly described the type of farming that takes place in the region and chaired the microphone between the speakers at different stands.
The farm, while it runs 140 dairy cows, typically slaughters 70 cattle each year with Foyle Meats. All cattle are targeted to be slaughtered under 24-months, with the male cattle left as bulls.
Some of the Angus-cross heifers will be finished off grass, but the Limousin-cross heifers and bulls will be housed for a intensive finishing period following a second summer at grass.
The farm is a recent dairy convert, having been in beef and sheep up to 2022.
Cow type is central to the overall system, with Ryan opting for a high-EBI, pedigree-classified Holstein/Friesian herd.
This allows him cross-back on cows not selected for dairy straws, with high carcase weight terminal bulls to breed a high-CBV calf. Ryan puts a lot of effort into breeding decisions to maximise the genetic potential of both dairy and beef offspring.
This was seen in 2025, where the farm did 578kg of milk solids per cow.
When making breeding decisions, he utilises all available information at his disposal to breed the best-performing cattle.
IHFA classification information, ICBF genetic evaluations and milk-recording data are all used to try breed an even cow type and best match sires to cows to correct weaknesses.
As a result, Ryan’s herd is ranked in the top 5% nationally for EBI.
All breeding is now done using AI, with the installation of a smaXtec monitoring system. Previously some beef bulls were used to mop up late cows. Ryan uses both Limousin and Angus beef sires on his cows, sourced from Dovea genetics.
Breeding
Kevin McDermott of ICBF explained the various breeding decisions that can be made on dairy farms to improve beef traits in cows.
He outlined how bulls with the same overall EBI can have a very different beef sub-index and encouraged farmers to pay close attention to the figures. Ryan’s farm is sitting just at the national average for the beef sub-index.
Farmers who select sires with a good beef sub-index allow for better quality beef cattle to be bred when mated with a beef sire.
Selecting bulls to breed replacements from with higher beef sub-index figures, will, in time, allow for a better-quality beef calf be bred from these replacements – as calf sales are becoming an ever more important income source on dairy farms.
CBV
Kevin also outlined to farmers who purchase calves that cow type can vary within a herd and across different herds. He encouraged farmers to purchase calves with a high CBV, as they are shown to have superior beef traits which may not be as easy to spot when calves are only three to four weeks old.
Niall Kilrane of ICBF explained the importance of CBV to farmers, and outlined the performance difference seen between low- and high-CBV cattle.
On the day, there were a number of examples to explain CBV’s benefit. The first was how two cows with a difference of €18 in the EBI beef sub-index mated to the same bull birthed two calves that had a difference in CBV of €48.
Another example was two 2026-born calves; one calf with a CBV of €274 had an average daily gain of 1.05/kg/day, while a lower-CBV calf of €113 had a daily gain of just 0.79; Niall outlined that this disparity would only increase as the animals got older.
He also pointed out to farmers that the data built into the CBV gathered from Tully shows that animals with a higher CBV will consume 1kg DM/day less, allowing for younger finishing age and heavier carcase weights; increasing farm performance.
Animal health
Local vet Niall McSharry of Northwest Vets, alongside Aidan Kieran of Foyle Meats, discussed some of what they’ve seen on factory lines and encouraged farmers to pay attention to animal health reports issued on cattle being slaughtered, to ensure there are no underlying conditions.
Niall went through dosing procedures farmers should be implementing on-farm, noting he has seen a big switch to first obtaining faecal samples and then dosing according to results.
He said a lower worm count can be seen across farms in his region for 2026, but added that farmers need to be testing regularly to prevent a spike in egg counts.
There was a demo on the evening of lungs and livers, where Niall showed how these parasites can affect and damage the animal’s performance.
