East Donegal is home to some great land and some great farmers and the Peoples’ family farm just outside Carrigans in Co Donegal is a typical example of the farms in the area. Gareth farms alongside his mother, Anita, and his wife, Enya, along with their two children, Thomas and Sarah.
Mixed farming is still a big part of the farming systems in the area with a lot of mixed tillage and beef enterprises being run, each benefiting from the positives of the other.
The farm is a participant in the Teagasc Dairy Beef 500 programme and Gareth has worked with his advisers over the last few years to develop a plan to make some positive changes to his farm in terms of sustainability objectives and profitability objectives.
The Peoples run a dairy calf to beef operation, concentrating in the past on Holstein Friesian bull calves, but have been moving more to a beef-cross calf in recent years as the availability of the dairy bull calves decreases.
This spring, 45 calves were purchased with a further 55 planned for purchase in the autumn.
These animals are then finished as bullocks at around 24 months of age. Gareth is trialling a few bulls this year but the core of his system will remain as bullocks.
“We had a few early bull calves last year that got a bit strong for castrating and we left them entire,” he said.
Intensive meal feeding
“They have been out grazing, but will come into the shed in the next few weeks to step up onto intensive meal feeding. It will be interesting to see how they go. They are a little harder managed at grass so I wouldn’t see myself going all bulls.”
The system has been to house the bullocks at the end of the second grazing season and finish on good-quality silage and predominantly home produced grain.
Grassland and calf price
Gareth places emphasis on grassland management on the farm and targets early turnout along with paddock grazing to maximise weight gains.
“We are probably in four- to five-day breaks at the moment, ideally we’d be at three, but grass growth has been really good for the last two weeks.”
Calf price is a big determinant of whether a margin will be achieved or not in a dairy-beef system and some eyebrows have been raised recently about some of the prices being paid for dairy-beef calves.
ICBF calf price analysis for the week ending 22 June shows Friesian bull calves under three weeks of age selling for €4,309; Hereford bull calves under three weeks selling for €4,531; while Aberdeen Angus bull calves are selling at €483/head.
Prices are up between €242/head and €4,364/head on the same week in 2024. The main driver has been live exporters, mopping up 70-80% of calf sales at the moment in marts.
Paying over €500/head for three-week-old calves is a big chance when you take the length of time it takes to finish that calf
Farmers are getting caught up in the frenzy with some locked in a dairy-beef system feeling that they have had no choice but to pay more for calves. Tommy Cox, Teagasc Dairy Beef 500 adviser, touched on the subject of calf prices on the night. “You would have to wonder are farmers doing their sums at the moment in relation to calf price. Paying over €500/head for three-week-old calves is a big chance when you take the length of time it takes to finish that calf,” he said.
“You are looking at a 2027 finish and a lot could happen in between. An increased calf price is eating into your margin if beef price falls.”
Gareth was in the market early and managed to avoid the very high prices for 2025.
“Where we were paying €60-€100/head for calves in previous years, this has gone up to €80-€120 this year,” he says. “We have a relationship built up with a few local dairy farmers and I guess it works both ways.”
Silage quality
While it’s too late to impact the quality of first-cuts on farms in 2025, there is still time to make sure that the second-cut comes in with high digestibility.
Kevin McMenamin, a Teagasc adviser based in Ballybofey, outlined some simple points in relation to making quality silage and the impact that silage quality can have on weight gains on finishing farms.
Table 3 outlines the effects of poor-quality silage on weight gains.
In terms of feeding weanlings to achieve a weight gain of 0.6kg/day 60% dry matter digestibility (DMD) silage would require 2.5kg of ration daily while weanling being fed 70% DMD silage would only require 1.25kg/day of ration to achieve the same weight gain.
Making 70% DMD silage v 60% DMD silage is equal to a saving of €6,562 when feeding 100 weanlings over a 150-day winter.
Castration
The earlier the better. That was the clear and simple message from Michelle McGrath from Animal Health Ireland at last week’s farm walk.
Calves can be castrated with a burdizzo under six months of age but after six months castration must be completed by a vet.
“The younger the calf is, the easier it will be on them and both a local anaesthetic and pain relief should be administered when castrating and dehorning calves,” she said. “Castration also shouldn’t be completed along with other tasks like weaning, dosing, mixing or transporting calves.”
Farm facts