Kieran Noonan represents Cork in the BETTER farm beef programme, along with Lissarda suckler man John McSweney.
Kieran keeps a 50-cow autumn-calving herd near Charleville. The herd is a mixture of pedigree (30) and commercial (20) cows.
Young calves getting accustomed to concentrate feed.Young calves getting accustomed to concentrate feed.
The pedigree cohort is predominantly Limousin, though there are some Hereford bloodlines present too.
Kieran is a passionate breeder, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of genetic lines and the breeding indices, a trait that complements his off-farm job as an AI technician with Munster AI very well.
Dromanig King
He has built a solid reputation for producing quality pedigree stock and this culminated in the sale of a young Limousin bull to Dovea Genetics in late 2016.
Dromanig King. \ Dovea, Alfie ShawThe bull is by the famed Wilodge Cerberus and out of an Imperial cow.
“He was born in October 2015. Dromanig King (LM4302) has five stars on both the replacement (€149) and terminal (€143) indices,” Kieran said.
Calving difficulty is 4.4% (51% reliability) and carcase weight (weight for age) is an impressive 28kg. Daughter milk is 5.1kg (four stars across all breeds).
Across all of his pedigree progeny, the average bull selling price in 2017 was €2,470 and heifers were €1,500.
Scanning
There are 65 breeding females on the farm at present, with Kieran planning to keep calving numbers at 50. He is bulling all of his heifers and selling the surplus.
Cows that slip outside his autumn breeding period will either be culled at weaning, or bulled to calve in the springtime and sold at relevant sales.
Last week, 34 females were pregnancy scanned.
“There was one empty cow that had a dead embryo in her. We gave her a shot (enzaprost) and she was in heat three days later, so hopefully she held to that service.
“Out of 14 heifers in the batch scanned, three were empty. I’ll scan the rest of the herd before they go to grass,” he said.
Kieran has good covers of grass around his yard, having operated an autumn rotation planner in 2017, strategically closing paddocks off for winter.
Kieran Noonan and a Fiston daughter.Kieran Noonan and a Fiston daughter.
Given his autumn-calving pattern, young calves have the facility to creep out to these paddocks early. In fact, he is targeting his calves as his main stock group for grazing off silage ground pre-cutting. His plan is to close up silage fields by the second week in April.
Grass burst
Kieran recorded the second highest average grass growth across the BETTER beef programme in 2017, with his farm averaging almost 13t DM/ha of production.
Kieran’s grazing block is a tale of two halves. Of 105 acres, half were overrun with rushes at the turn of 2017.
This part of the farm was extremely unproductive, only achieving a handful of grazing in a good year. That meant that the productive part of the farm was carrying a stocking rate in excess of 5LU/ha at certain points in 2017.
Kieran will work to reclaim this ground during his time in the programme – 18 acres were drained in late 2017, but a turn in the weather meant that he could not get a plough in. Reseeding is on his to-do list in 2018.
Read more
BETTER farm year one, highs and lows
A video tour of Kieran’s farm
Full complement of BETTER beef articles
Kieran Noonan represents Cork in the BETTER farm beef programme, along with Lissarda suckler man John McSweney.
Kieran keeps a 50-cow autumn-calving herd near Charleville. The herd is a mixture of pedigree (30) and commercial (20) cows.
Young calves getting accustomed to concentrate feed.Young calves getting accustomed to concentrate feed.
The pedigree cohort is predominantly Limousin, though there are some Hereford bloodlines present too.
Kieran is a passionate breeder, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of genetic lines and the breeding indices, a trait that complements his off-farm job as an AI technician with Munster AI very well.
Dromanig King
He has built a solid reputation for producing quality pedigree stock and this culminated in the sale of a young Limousin bull to Dovea Genetics in late 2016.
Dromanig King. \ Dovea, Alfie ShawThe bull is by the famed Wilodge Cerberus and out of an Imperial cow.
“He was born in October 2015. Dromanig King (LM4302) has five stars on both the replacement (€149) and terminal (€143) indices,” Kieran said.
Calving difficulty is 4.4% (51% reliability) and carcase weight (weight for age) is an impressive 28kg. Daughter milk is 5.1kg (four stars across all breeds).
Across all of his pedigree progeny, the average bull selling price in 2017 was €2,470 and heifers were €1,500.
Scanning
There are 65 breeding females on the farm at present, with Kieran planning to keep calving numbers at 50. He is bulling all of his heifers and selling the surplus.
Cows that slip outside his autumn breeding period will either be culled at weaning, or bulled to calve in the springtime and sold at relevant sales.
Last week, 34 females were pregnancy scanned.
“There was one empty cow that had a dead embryo in her. We gave her a shot (enzaprost) and she was in heat three days later, so hopefully she held to that service.
“Out of 14 heifers in the batch scanned, three were empty. I’ll scan the rest of the herd before they go to grass,” he said.
Kieran has good covers of grass around his yard, having operated an autumn rotation planner in 2017, strategically closing paddocks off for winter.
Kieran Noonan and a Fiston daughter.Kieran Noonan and a Fiston daughter.
Given his autumn-calving pattern, young calves have the facility to creep out to these paddocks early. In fact, he is targeting his calves as his main stock group for grazing off silage ground pre-cutting. His plan is to close up silage fields by the second week in April.
Grass burst
Kieran recorded the second highest average grass growth across the BETTER beef programme in 2017, with his farm averaging almost 13t DM/ha of production.
Kieran’s grazing block is a tale of two halves. Of 105 acres, half were overrun with rushes at the turn of 2017.
This part of the farm was extremely unproductive, only achieving a handful of grazing in a good year. That meant that the productive part of the farm was carrying a stocking rate in excess of 5LU/ha at certain points in 2017.
Kieran will work to reclaim this ground during his time in the programme – 18 acres were drained in late 2017, but a turn in the weather meant that he could not get a plough in. Reseeding is on his to-do list in 2018.
Read more
BETTER farm year one, highs and lows
A video tour of Kieran’s farm
Full complement of BETTER beef articles
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