I farm: “With my mam and dad, Carmel and Noel, at home in Co Westmeath. We milk 280 cows on all our own grazing platform. Dad does most of the milking and I manage the grass. Mam and I look after the calves, as well as my sisters Catriona and Elisha.”

The cows: “Are Holstein Friesians and all spring calving. They are getting 3kg meal in the parlour at the minute and we have a somatic cell count of 90,000. We have all the cows and breeding heifers vaccinated for bluetongue.”

Breeding: “Calving went well this year, and we are well through the breeding season now. We started on the 23 April, AI’ed for five weeks then let out the stock bulls. We get our straws from Progressive Genetics, 100 of them were sexed semen, and the rest were conventional beef straws. Of the sexed, half went into replacement heifers and the other half were used on the highest performing cows recommended in our sire advice report. We use tail paint for heat detection.”

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Stock bulls: ”The stock bulls are Angus and Hereford; we put the Hereford with the heifers, and Angus with the cows.”

The calves: “Are reared on whole milk. They’re all weaned now and are at grass. We will keep them until they are two-years-old and sell them to the mart and private buyers.”

Grass: “We have loads of grass in front of the cows, thankfully. We got our first cut of silage done on 23 May for the pit, and we took out five paddocks of surplus grass over the weekend. We have our own mower and baler, its handy for managing grass.”

This week: “We will get slurry out to the paddocks we baled at the weekend. We have 25ac, which is share-farmed, ploughed and hope to get grass seed into it over the next few days.”