Last week the Irish Farmers Journal travelled to Co Down for a farm walk held on the farm of James and Brenda Henderson. The walk was facilitated by the British Grassland Society as James and Brenda were the recipients of the 2025 Grassland Farmer of the Year Award.

The farm is situated next to the coast in Kilkeel, Co Down and comprises 60ha of mostly dry, sandy

soil.

The farming system here sees 90 beef-sired heifer calves from the dairy herd reared through to slaughter alongside 300 breeding sheep, with all lambs brought through to slaughter and replacements retained within the flock.

Beef calves

The beef calves are purchased in the autumn each year and reared over the winter. They comprise Angus, Hereford and British Blue-crosses.

James opts to only feed heifer calves; all his animals are purchased from the one farm with bull calves going to a separate farmer.

Calves consume 700g/day powdered milk per day until they are eating 1kg of concentrates.

Once the calves are weaned, they are fed 2kg of concentrates alongside straw for roughage and built up to ad lib red clover silage mix until turnout.

As the calves are fully weaned before leaving the shed in the first winter, they are primed for consuming grass.

They have a growth rate of 0.9kg/day over the first summer and are housed for a second winter when a weight gain of 0.5 kg/day to 0.7 kg/day is achieved.

The cattle return to grass for the second grazing season. No meal is fed at grass and the more traditional breeds will be drafted for slaughter as they come fit.

Continental breeds like British Blue-cross cattle will be housed and finished on a diet of silage and home-grown barley mix with the aim to have cattle slaughtered before 24 months.

Heifers are slaughtered from 20 months of age up to 24 months at an average live weight of 665kg. Last year’s heifers recorded a carcase weight of 348kg with 78% grading R and 22% grading O.

James doesn’t have a preferred breed and likes a mix of both traditional and continental sired calves.

Grass

There is a strong focus on grass management, with James walking the farm weekly. Cattle are grazed in two mobs over the summer months for ease of management.

They are grazed in 48-hour breaks with the use of sub-divisions in larger paddocks and a mobile water system used to best maximise grass utilisation.

James explained: “The key to performance of grass is careful attention to the grass wedge and removing paddocks when necessary as surplus to maintain quality. We also aim to pre-mow paddocks every second grazing over the summer months as it keeps the quality of grass high after multiple grazings.”

The farm is currently growing over 100kg DM/ha with demand sitting at 74kg DM/ha, James has paddocks selected to be removed for surplus in the coming weeks and is pre-mowing where covers are on the stronger side.

This year’s batch of calves for viewing on the day were grazing a cover that was growing for only 16 days, illustrating the farm’s ability to produce grass.

In 2013, cattle on the farm were consuming on average 1300kg of concentrates in their lifetime. Since then James has focused hugely on grass and implementing a rotational grazing system. He has reduced lifetime concentrate consumed to 470kg/head.

Sheep

Alongside the beef cattle the farm carries 250 ewes and also lambs down 60 ewe lambs each year.

The farm traditionally had a focus on Rouge and Texel-cross sheep and in more recent years introduced Aberfield and Belclare genetics. James will only use performance-recorded rams to maximise results. Ewes begin lambing in March with the ewe lambs lambing in April.

All lambs are weight recorded at eight weeks; the best-performing ewes and ewe lambs are selected for breeding the following season.

The average age of slaughter for lambs on the farm is 168 days with an average liveweight of 46kg.

Lambs have an average carcase weight of 21.5kg with 1.5% grading E, 48.9% grading U and 49.6% grading R.

Lambs are weighed regularly with the eight-week weight gain of all lambs averaging 328g/day, with a weight gain of 287g/day at weaning.

Multispecies sward

Over the last number of years, the farm has been experimenting in new sustainable grazing techniques.

The incorporation of red clover silage swards in the beef cattle has been matched with including multispecies swards (MSS) into the reseeding rotation. James has the aim of reseeding a MSS with six species, the mix consisting of 8kg grass, 3kg clover seed and 3kg herbs.

The reseed will follow a crop of barley and to date there has been little weed pressure, except from thistles in one reseed. Ewes and lambs graze the sward up until weaning when ewes will be removed from the MSS area.

The big benefit of the MSS is the farm is prone to drought in late summer time. This traditionally coincided with lamb weaning and often post-weaning lamb performance was poor. In periods of dry weather, the last two years herbs such as plantain have performed well, offering lambs a nutritious sward to graze.

Lamb performance has improved over the last number of years. James explained: “The improvement in lambs’ performance is down to a number of reasons including overall improved grass management with better rotational grazing, using only performance-recorded rams and the incorporation of MSS into the grazing platform.”

With the exception of pet lambs no other lambs will consume concentrates throughout their lifetime; all lambs are slaughtered off grass. The reduction of over 50 days in the slaughter age of lambs has taken the pressure of grazing in the back end of the year with less lambs around.

Lambs receive one worm dose for nematodirus and one dose pre-weaning with faecal egg samples taken post-weaning and James will dose accordingly.

James is going to experiment with including 2kg of chicory in the next MSS mix to see if there will be improved resilience to worms when lambs graze it.

Ewes who are removed from the MSS areas at weaning will remain grazing silage ground and grass-only swards until there is more research available on grazing ewes on swards with red clover present during the breeding season.

James has a good hit rate with the MSS in terms of maintaining both the plantain and chicory herbs in the sward; when these die out the sward will be maintained as a grass-clover silage sward and the level of N will be increased.

The aim of the MSS is to break the period post-weaning when forage supply can be low in years of poor growth and get the benefit of the herbs for the few years they will be present.

By including it in the reseeding rotation there will always be an area of the farm with MSS present.

Soil improvements

In the last 10 years, James

has spent considerable time

and money on improving the soil

index for phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) while also improving the soil’s PH index.

The farm has a good PH index now with only a maintenance liming application applied according to soil sample results.

The farm is status two for P and status three for K.

The reseeding policy on farm is that ground gets prepared for winter barley sown first, the fields are ploughed and get an application of 25-30t/ha of seaweed harvested from the local beach or farmyard manure.

Following harvesting, the field is then replanted with either a red clover or multispecies ley.

Dating back to when James’s father purchased the land after the war – it was an old World War II airfield – there were 12ha of concrete, all of which was dug up and removed.

The concrete was reused and

walls were built around the farm.

There is a total of 11km of walls on the farm which offers great

shelter from what can often be harsh weather conditions, being located next to the sea.