While many of the BETTER participants took their first steps in serious grassland management this year, Tommy Holmes came into 2017 a grass stalwart.

He has been measuring his farm and using the Teagasc Pasturebase system for a number of years.

“I’ve been running a paddock system here for years. In the last decade, 80% of the farm would have been reseeded,” Tommy told me.

Fertility

He keeps a close eye on soil fertility too. Last winter, the farm's average pH was 5.95, with P and K levels both at the upper end of index two. This year he has spread 40t of lime and used a significant amount of 18-6-12 compound fertiliser to try and improve these metrics.

When we analysed the BETTER farm’s grass production last week, Tommy came out on top. The 19 paddocks across his 18ha farm produced an average of 15.4t (grass dry matter per hectare in 2017) – a figure that would put a lot of dairy farmers to shame. Indeed, it’s almost twice the programme average of 7.9t.

Grass10

Earlier this autumn, Tommy opened his farm gates to local producers as part of Teagasc’s Grass10 farm walk series. Attendees heard of Tommy’s journey and were interested, in particular, in how he managed wet conditions.

“I move cattle every day, sometimes twice daily. There are 19 permanent paddocks, averaging just under 1ha in area, but the strip wires are up almost all year round,” Tommy told the crowd.

He enforced a strict autumn rotation planner to ensure that he has grass available in the spring, when he will look to turnout young stock as early as he can. Sixty per cent of the grazing area was grazed in a final rotation and closed for winter by 24 October.

Urea

“I plan to hit it with urea at the end of January and get weanling bulls into it on 1 March,” Tommy added.

"Tommy you've 20% of the farm closed up already - what's next for those paddocks?" #Grass10 pic.twitter.com/4FARFruhGL
— FJ Beef (@FJBeef) October 5, 2017

He will take in 40 400kg bulls to graze after Chritsmas. This will be in conjunction with his own cow herd, which he plans to grow to 25. All of their progeny will be retained for slaughter.

“My calving spread had gotten away from me after a bit of bull trouble, but I put a lot of effort in this year. I replaced 11 cows and will probably buy more with calves at foot in the spring if the cash is there,” Tommy told me.

“I’m moving from an Angus to a Limousin-type cow to try and up the weights a bit,” he added.