I farm: “With my father Oliver and sister Karen. Karen gives a good hand with the sheep and lambing; she keeps 10 pedigree Suffolk ewes of her own, she keeps the ewe lambs and sells the ram lambs on as breeding rams. My dad gives a hand too and he also does a bit of contracting.”
Stock: “We have 35 suckler cows and 100 ewes. The cows are predominantly Limousin. We have 10 pedigrees and some Simmental crosses too. We operate a split calving system, with half calving in spring and half in autumn. The autumn calvers are mostly AI; we use a stock bull in spring.”
Breeding: “For the pedigrees, we focus on breeding a good-quality bull with a high star rating as that is what the customer requires. We sell bulls in Carrick-on-Shannon at the multibreed sales. We sold two in the May sale; they made €7,300 and €6,400 – we were delighted with that. When choosing sires for the commercial herd we focus on breeding a high-quality weanling suitable for the export market while also maintaining ease of calving and less hassle during calving season.”
Replacements: “We keep on six or seven heifers as replacements every year and they are synchronised. Our bull calves are sold at 12 months in the mart, and we keep the heifers for stock sales.”
Sheep: “The ewes are mostly Texel crosses, and we use Suffolk and Texel rams. We lamb in early March. We like to have them out the day after lambing but that didn’t happen this year, with the weather. We keep the lambs and creep feed them and sell them as fats at 46 or 47kg in Manorhamilton Mart.”
Land type: “Is marginal and needs a lot of care. We bought land in 2017, we drained and reseeded it, which has helped a lot. In terms of contracting, it is mostly spraying, mulching and finishing slurry at the moment. Silage doesn’t start here until June.”
This year: “We plan to do a bit of draining work on the land at home. We put in for a grant for a handling unit for cattle so hopefully we will have it in for the back end.”
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