I farm: “With my wife Colette, daughter Zoe and my son Evan. It’s a family affair.”

Sheep: “We have 70 commercial ewes and 30 pedigree ewes. The commercial ewes are a mix of Texel-, Suffolk- and Borris-type breeds, while the pedigree ewes are Charollais.”

Lambing: “We lamb half of the pedigrees and commercials in January and the other half in March. This batch of lambing started last Friday and it is going well. No matter what you do with sheep, losses can occur. Sometimes you would be afraid to talk about it in case you jinx it but so far, so good this year. “We have 15 lambed so far for this batch and it should be all finished in three weeks’ time. We sell the pedigrees as hogget rams and we sell the commercial lambs straight to a butcher, Neil Tynan over in Johnstown, Co Kilkenny. The lambs are finished at about 51-52kg and they need to be good lambs for the butcher.”

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Quintuplets: “The quintuplets were born last Friday morning. Unfortunately, one of them was lost as it was very weak but the other four are doing well. They are getting the best of both worlds, we are giving them the bottle as well as sucking from the ewe, so they are happy out at the moment.”

Price: “Spring lamb is making good money at the money, but this may not last.”

Part-time farming: “I work full time outside of the farm as well as a welder/fitter. I usually take two or three weeks off around lambing time to be around all the time and keep an eye on them.”

Quotable quote: “In terms of balancing working full-time and sheep farming, it depends on what sort of person you are, you can either let it get on top of you, or you get on top of it.”