North Longford is one of the lesser-spotted places on the Leinster road map – a picturesque place with lots of small suckler farms, the bread and butter of rural Ireland.
Last Friday as storm Amy blasted her way across the country I visited the McKeon family who farm in between Ballinalee and Aughnacliffe in north Longford.
Land type is typical of the area with a mix of free-draining land and wetter areas. Mark McKeon is a busy man. He owns an agri store, farms alongside his father Michael, his wife Caroline and daughters Sinead and Ciara and also finds some time for attending summer shows, a passion that all the family share.
The McKeon family farm has a few irons in the fire. One of the enterprises is producing in-calf heifers. Commenting on the reason they went down this road, Mark said: “I suppose we saw an opportunity there for producing good in-calf heifers. There are a lot of people at it now but there wasn’t when we started a few years ago.”
There are a lot of smaller type suckler farmers who don’t go to the trouble of producing replacement heifers any more. They run a good terminal-type bull and sell all their weanlings.
It keeps the system simpler for them and they just buy in their heifers that they need.
The McKeons place themselves not at the very high show end of heifers but are targeting the good commercial heifer instead. The majority of McKeons’ heifers are Limousin x Belgian Blue with some Simmental breeding in some of the heifers.
“I suppose there are customers for all sorts of heifers out there, but we want to produce a heifer that produces a good calf, has enough milk to feed that calf, goes back in-calf quickly and stays in the herd for a long time. It’s hard to do that with some of the very muscley heifers.”
The McKeons also choose to calve down a high proportion of their heifers before their sale each year.
“We wanted to offer something different and if we take on the risk of calving the heifers, we feel that farmers are able to pay a little more for a live calf on the ground taking the chance out of it.”
Some of the heifers are in calf to AI Limousin bulls with more in calf to the Grangeford Jojo sired Limousin bull.
“We’re not big into stars. I think there is 15 of the heifers eligible for the SCEP scheme but were not really focusing on figures when we are buying heifers.
“This year’s sale takes place on Monday 13 October in Carrigallen mart and will include 20 calved heifers with calves and 15 in-calf heifers are included in the sale.
I visited the McKeon family who farm in between Ballinalee and Aughnacliffe in north Longford.
Health
The McKeons put a lot of effort into making sure the outfits they sell go on and do a job for the buyer including producing a healthy calf for sale.
“We don’t hold back on the calf treatments. Calves are all dosed for coccidiosis, vaccinated against clostridial disease and vaccinated against pneumonia. They also receive a mineral dose. Cows have all got 2 magnesium boluses, a worm dose, an IBR vaccine and a Leptospirosis vaccine along with a mineral dose before the sale.”
The sheep flock is also an important part of the farm system. The 100 ewe flock are lambed from January to March every year with a lot of the lambs ready for the Easter market or shortly after it.
Showing
When questioned on how showing cattle came about, Mark wasn’t really able to answer.“I don’t know to be honest. I suppose we were always very busy at other things and we never really done a lot together as a family,” he said.
“We started to go to shows together with a heifer a few years ago and I guess we were just bitten by the bug. There’s nothing we love more now than setting off to shows at the weekend.
McKeon family farm.
“The showing season starts for us in May and continues right through to Glenamaddy in September. We’ve made great friends on the showing scene and we get a great kick out of showing cattle.”
The flair for showing has transferred to the next generation as well with Sinead and Ciara both involved in showing.
“We took home 104 rosettes last year from a pretty small showing team which we were delighted with. 2024 was probably our most successful to date with our show heifer taking home the reserve overall senior commercial champion at the FBD National Livestock show in Tullamore along with taking home the all-Ireland beef title in Strokestown.”
Agri store
The final piece of the jigsaw on the McKeon farm is the agri store and engineering business.
“We saw an opening in 2008 to open a small agri store and it’s been growing since then. We keep everything a farmer needs from fencing posts to animal feed. People thought we were mad opening it out here in the country but we have great local support and it’s very busy.”
Sinead has put her own stamp on the business with the store now stocking show supplies and equestrian supplies for the last few years. Like many other businesses, they have moved online this year with the show supplies, equestrian supplies and full farm shop now online for customers to click and collect or click and deliver.
Sinead does this alongside her studies in CAFRE, Enniskillen where she is in her second year of studying equine management. Mark also runs an engineering business erecting sheds in the Longford area.
Farm facts
Farm size: 150 acres (split across two blocks)
Farm system: in-calf heifer production (60 maiden heifers and 60 in calf heifers), weanling to beef (40) and 100 early lambing ewes (Suffolk/Texel/Charollais crosses)
North Longford is one of the lesser-spotted places on the Leinster road map – a picturesque place with lots of small suckler farms, the bread and butter of rural Ireland.
Last Friday as storm Amy blasted her way across the country I visited the McKeon family who farm in between Ballinalee and Aughnacliffe in north Longford.
Land type is typical of the area with a mix of free-draining land and wetter areas. Mark McKeon is a busy man. He owns an agri store, farms alongside his father Michael, his wife Caroline and daughters Sinead and Ciara and also finds some time for attending summer shows, a passion that all the family share.
The McKeon family farm has a few irons in the fire. One of the enterprises is producing in-calf heifers. Commenting on the reason they went down this road, Mark said: “I suppose we saw an opportunity there for producing good in-calf heifers. There are a lot of people at it now but there wasn’t when we started a few years ago.”
There are a lot of smaller type suckler farmers who don’t go to the trouble of producing replacement heifers any more. They run a good terminal-type bull and sell all their weanlings.
It keeps the system simpler for them and they just buy in their heifers that they need.
The McKeons place themselves not at the very high show end of heifers but are targeting the good commercial heifer instead. The majority of McKeons’ heifers are Limousin x Belgian Blue with some Simmental breeding in some of the heifers.
“I suppose there are customers for all sorts of heifers out there, but we want to produce a heifer that produces a good calf, has enough milk to feed that calf, goes back in-calf quickly and stays in the herd for a long time. It’s hard to do that with some of the very muscley heifers.”
The McKeons also choose to calve down a high proportion of their heifers before their sale each year.
“We wanted to offer something different and if we take on the risk of calving the heifers, we feel that farmers are able to pay a little more for a live calf on the ground taking the chance out of it.”
Some of the heifers are in calf to AI Limousin bulls with more in calf to the Grangeford Jojo sired Limousin bull.
“We’re not big into stars. I think there is 15 of the heifers eligible for the SCEP scheme but were not really focusing on figures when we are buying heifers.
“This year’s sale takes place on Monday 13 October in Carrigallen mart and will include 20 calved heifers with calves and 15 in-calf heifers are included in the sale.
I visited the McKeon family who farm in between Ballinalee and Aughnacliffe in north Longford.
Health
The McKeons put a lot of effort into making sure the outfits they sell go on and do a job for the buyer including producing a healthy calf for sale.
“We don’t hold back on the calf treatments. Calves are all dosed for coccidiosis, vaccinated against clostridial disease and vaccinated against pneumonia. They also receive a mineral dose. Cows have all got 2 magnesium boluses, a worm dose, an IBR vaccine and a Leptospirosis vaccine along with a mineral dose before the sale.”
The sheep flock is also an important part of the farm system. The 100 ewe flock are lambed from January to March every year with a lot of the lambs ready for the Easter market or shortly after it.
Showing
When questioned on how showing cattle came about, Mark wasn’t really able to answer.“I don’t know to be honest. I suppose we were always very busy at other things and we never really done a lot together as a family,” he said.
“We started to go to shows together with a heifer a few years ago and I guess we were just bitten by the bug. There’s nothing we love more now than setting off to shows at the weekend.
McKeon family farm.
“The showing season starts for us in May and continues right through to Glenamaddy in September. We’ve made great friends on the showing scene and we get a great kick out of showing cattle.”
The flair for showing has transferred to the next generation as well with Sinead and Ciara both involved in showing.
“We took home 104 rosettes last year from a pretty small showing team which we were delighted with. 2024 was probably our most successful to date with our show heifer taking home the reserve overall senior commercial champion at the FBD National Livestock show in Tullamore along with taking home the all-Ireland beef title in Strokestown.”
Agri store
The final piece of the jigsaw on the McKeon farm is the agri store and engineering business.
“We saw an opening in 2008 to open a small agri store and it’s been growing since then. We keep everything a farmer needs from fencing posts to animal feed. People thought we were mad opening it out here in the country but we have great local support and it’s very busy.”
Sinead has put her own stamp on the business with the store now stocking show supplies and equestrian supplies for the last few years. Like many other businesses, they have moved online this year with the show supplies, equestrian supplies and full farm shop now online for customers to click and collect or click and deliver.
Sinead does this alongside her studies in CAFRE, Enniskillen where she is in her second year of studying equine management. Mark also runs an engineering business erecting sheds in the Longford area.
Farm facts
Farm size: 150 acres (split across two blocks)
Farm system: in-calf heifer production (60 maiden heifers and 60 in calf heifers), weanling to beef (40) and 100 early lambing ewes (Suffolk/Texel/Charollais crosses)
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