When I turned 18, that’s when I took a big interest in the farming. I’m from Magheraveely, Co Fermanagh.

After school, I actually did three years of information and communications technology (ICT) in South West College, Enniskillen. Sitting at a computer drove me mad, but the IT paid off in the long run, because I’m doing all the VAT, registering and all that. It’s a good thing to have, don’t get me wrong. I have the qualification there, but sitting in an office wasn’t for me. I had to be out and about.

I started helping my father Pat around with milking and that. I was glad to be home at that point

I literally just finished my ICT course when I went and worked in Ready Egg for about two years. I was 20. Ready Egg manufactures pasteurised liquid egg, scrambled egg and boiled egg.

Then I came home full-time and got into farming. We were in dairy and sucklers at the time. I started helping my father Pat around with milking and that. I was glad to be home at that point. I went and completed a level two beef course in CAFRE Enniskillen, which allowed me to be eligible for the Young Farmers’ Payment.

New venture

More or less, the dairy end wasn’t paying enough to keep me at home, so we were just looking at more options. We saw that Ready Egg were looking for suppliers. I’ve a twin brother Paddy that works in Ready Egg at the moment. It’s me and him that went into this venture.

We started chatting about it and got prices. It took us about two years before we actually got a start on anything. It cost roughly half a million to put up – it was a big investment. It took a lot of thinking to be sure we could financially do it, but once we got the loans from the bank sorted, it was just straight ahead, go for it.

Denis studied ICT and then decided he wanted to come home to farm.

It’s a 16,000 free-range bird unit. We’re into our second flock now, this is the second year it’s up. I’m happy – there’s a good turnover in it and it’s going well.

I’ve an app on my phone that’s linked to the hen house. It shows the temperature in the house, the humidity, water and feed records, all that sort of stuff. So I can constantly monitor what’s happening. An alarm goes off too if anything goes wrong.

We’ve one of the higher spec systems. You can get different models; you can go from a lower-spec system, which is cheaper, to a higher spec system. We said it would be better going for the higher spec system, because it would pay off in the long run

Different days

The hens are very different to the dairy and beef. The time that avian flu hit up by Fermanagh? That was a big scare. It was just constant bio security – spraying vehicles, keeping the house sprayed and making sure there were no foreign bodies in the hen house. It was a bigger scare than now, because people lost their hens over it.

Ready Egg operates a 16,000-bird free-range unit.

With the cows you can on go the quad and you don’t even need a stick, with the hens you’re running around the field like a mad man. I try to get the milking done in the morning early and then I go up to the hen house at about half seven. I check everything and run the egg belts then.

Cows

We’ve about 30 cows at the moment and we’d like to get up to about 60 in the next couple of years, that’s the plan. I think we might be going out of the sucklers at that time, because there’s enough to be at. We’ve about 20 sucklers at the moment.

We supply Glanbia and half our milk is locked in at a fixed rate, the other half goes up or down. It’s alright being locked in – at least you know you’re not going to fall. I couldn’t complain about it.

This, when compared to the ICT, is a big difference – being my own boss and no one breathing down my neck, that’s what makes it.

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