I farm: ”Cattle and sheep on 125ac in Briarfort, about 5km from the home farm which is all dairy. I work in social care Monday to Friday from 9:30am to 3:30pm, along with the farming – it’s good to have a mixture of the both. My friend Laura gives me a hand too, she’s a great help.”
Cattle: ”I buy all my cattle from Dad, so they’d be all out of Friesians. I sold 27 bullocks there in January that I had bought off him. I usually get them to the 400kg-450kg mark. I have another 22 heifers which I bought off him last year and I’m going to breed out of them. Twenty of them are Angus heifers and they went out last week with an Angus bull, and there’s two Charolais heifers that I’m going to AI with an easy calving Shorthorn.”
Yearlings: “I have another 20 yearling heifers bought off dad that I’ll breed out of as well. This is my first year going into sucklers, so I’m trying to expand numbers at the minute. I’d hope to have 40-50 suckler cows in total.”
Sheep: “I have 115 breeding ewes which are a mixture of Suffolk and Lleyn, with a few Mules as well. I do all early lambing – I start the first week of January and have them all lambed within six weeks. I’ll run three Texel rams with them around August.”
Factory: ”I’ll have a few lambs ready for the factory next week, I usually go to Kepak in Athleague. I’ll have a few heavier ones that I’ll take to the mart then as well.”
Reseeding: ”I reseeded over 50% of the farm last year. I did a mixture of ploughing and stitching in, and both have done really well.”
Fertiliser: ”The inclusion of clover in the reseeds will reduce the amount of fertiliser I’ll have to spread. All the land got slurry around eight weeks ago, and about a month ago it all got fertiliser.”



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