This year marks the 20th anniversary of the FBD Young Farmer of the Year farm walks. Eamonn Burke, the 2014 FBD Young Farmer of the Year county finalist and beef category winner, hosted the second of the Macra na Feirme organised walks this year.

He farms 200ha of leased land in county Galway with the land mainly based in Corrandulla, but he has rented ground stretching as far away as Athenry and Caherlistrane. The farm has 30ha designated to beef production, with the rest under tillage. Eamonn also runs a successful contracting business in partnership with his father.

A range of crops are grown on the farm such as spring barley, oats, fodder beet and kale. The farm is self-sufficient on nearly all feed, and only purchases soya-bean meal to add to the feed mixture for the winter.

Every year Eamonn buys around 100 Friesian bull calves from one source at around three weeks old. All calves are reared on milk powder and have access to straw and a good quality ration.

“I used to be finishing continental cattle but the margins became tighter and tighter, especially when factories didn’t want to take carcasses over 400kg. At least with Friesians it’s a lower input game and hopefully a lower risk too."

Regarding selling, Eamonn is very flexible; he either finishes the bulls under 24 months or will sell bulls as forward stores if the market is right.

He highlighted on the walk the difference between two sets of bulls that were all the same age, came from the same farm but were wintered in two different set-ups.

Bunch A were out-wintered on silage and Morris Kestrel, a variety of kale and received 1kg/head/day of a barley, oats and soya home-made ration. Bunch B were housed on slats and received good quality silage along with 2kg/head/day of the same ration.

“The bulls were weighed recently, with bunch A weighing in the region of 450-500kg, whilst bunch B weighed around 350-400kg. Even in the challenging winter and spring the out wintered animals thrived far better and had no signs of stress compared to the housed bulls”.

This year all yearlings will be out wintered, with only finishing animals in the shed. Eamonn’s finishing diet consisted of 10kg of his home-made ration, sugar beet and straw.

Grass management is very well run on the farm, with any grass gone too strong taken out as bales. “The most important tool for grass is the strip-wire, daily access to fresh grass is the best way to achieve optimal growth rates in cattle”.

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