I farm: “We’re renting 25ac and we own 44ac on the grazing block around the yard, and we have 50 green acres and 25 winterage type acres on the out-farm. We’re milking 84 Holsteins and supplying Kerry Group, I’m not tempted to mix any Jersey yet!”

Feeding silage: “We made the decision to start feeding silage last week. Grass growth slowed because of the dry weather and if we’d kept fully grazing we’d only have had four days of grazing left.”

Family: “I farm with my wife Frances and son Tomás, who helps out with the heavy lifting in evenings and on weekends. We have three girls who are grown up, and doing well working in other parts of the world.”

Replacements: “We’re carrying 27 replacement heifers plus 40 calves, of which 30 are replacements. But we’ve probably reached our limits in terms of herd size, because of the type of land we have by the sea, which is prone to drought in the summer.”

Tough winter: “The winter was tough. Our stocks of silage went virtually to nil. We had 17 bales left out of 1,300. We rolled an awful lot of the land this year but the land we didn’t get to roll you can still see the damage.”

Succession: “My son is working full-time. He’d like to come back to the farm one day but myself and my wife are still too young to retire, and the problem is there isn’t two family incomes out of 84 cows.”

Quotable quote: “This weather is going against us in terms of making more silage at the moment but you’re never more than a few weeks away from rain in the west of Ireland.”

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