Tullamore Farm is a 180-acre suckler/sheep demonstration farm operated by the Irish Famers Journal. The farm is just outside Tullamore in Co Offaly.

A 15-year lease has been taken out, which started on 1 January 2017.

Ger O’Dwyer is the full-time farm manager responsible for day-to-day operations in the herd.

The focus over the past few months has been around infrastructure changes on the farm and below we detail the type of changes that have taken place over the past few months.

The aim of the investment is to maximise return while farming in an environmentally sustainable way. We also want to maximise labour efficiency on the farm.

A real effort has been made to minimise investment in non-productive depreciating assets such as machinery and buildings.

Investment has so far been prioritised for areas such as stock, soil fertility, productive pastures and grazing infrastructure. As part of the lease, Tullamore Farm will contribute 60% of the capital infrastructure costs and the farm owners will contribute 40% of this cost.

Fencing and gates

Figure 1 outlines the current farm layout with roadways and new paddock system. The farm was previously divided into 19 divisions and is now in the process of being split into 38 divisions with the average paddock size at two hectares.

Most of the cattle fencing has been completed. A TAMS II application has been made to the Department of Agriculture to aid the erection of permanent sheep fencing next autumn before the sheep arrive.

The cattle fencing has been made up of a mixture of single strand electric fence and double strand electric fence and sheep wire along roadways.

A budget of €4,500 has been allocated for new gates on the farm. All posts are creosoted and are four to five inches in diameter.

Straining posts are seven feet long. Sheep fencing was concentrated on boundaries which had poor fences already and also along roadways.

Double strand electric was used along some roadways and in paddocks close to entrance and exit points.

Double strand electric was also used on boundaries which had a good stock-proof hedge.

A fencing contractor was used to complete all fencing on the farm.

Water drinkers and piping

The farm is serviced by mains water supply but had a low number of drinkers present on the farm.

A total of 26 new 140-gallon concrete drinking troughs were purchased and positioned in the centre of the new paddocks which gives the option of splitting most paddocks a second time with a temporary fence. Drinkers were positioned on a small pad of gravel in paddocks.

Scrub removal, drainage and roadway construction

One of the first jobs in January was to remove scrub and briars which had overgrown into fields on some of the farm. This work also involved cleaning drains and building roadways. In order to erect the new fences along the hedge line, this work was completed prior to fencing.

Roadways were designed to maximise paddock access for machinery and stock and the construction involved digging out six inches of the top layer of soil and replacing it with six inches of three-inch stone. This will later be finished with a finer 804 type material. Drainage works are planned for June 2017.

Reseeding costs

Over the next two years, 100% of the farm will be reseeded. Twenty-two acres were reseeded in June 2016 with a further 40 acres reseeded in September. We have completed 13 acres of reseeding in the past two weeks and will spray off a further five acres this week. Reseeding will be front-loaded to the start of the project in anticipation of carrying a much higher stocking rate in future. All reseeding will be carried out by a contractor with some ploughed and tilled, while other fields will be reseeding using min-till.

Read more

Watch: Tullamore Farm grass and breeding update

Editorial: significant investment in infrastructure at Tullamore Farm