Watch: planets align for big things in Sligo

Glen McDermott farms with his son Dillon (17) on the outskirts of Castlebaldwin in Sligo. Their 41ha is split into two blocks a couple of miles apart. Between the farms sits Glen’s bar-restaurant business, on the busy N4. When designing Glen’s farm plan, it was crucial to accommodate both on- and off-farm time commitments.

“I suppose our farming system is very much governed by the [bar] business. I want to avoid busy periods on the farm clashing with busy periods in the bar. When Peter [Mullan, local B&T adviser] and I met the BETTER team initially, the first area they identified for improvement was my calving spread. I was calving in eight months and that had to be tightened. A part of me was hesitant to create a huge workload for eight or 10 weeks in the spring – March is our busy period. So, we compromised and I’m in the process of pulling calving into the months of January and February. I hope to have 60 cows calving in just over eight weeks in 2019,” Glen commented.

Traditional weanling seller

A traditional weanling seller, Glen is currently slaughtering his own progeny as bulls for the first time and plans to stick with this system in future. While we want to get as much of our lifetime weight gain as possible on the cow, there is a balance to strike between the timing of our calving season and the pressure we put on ourselves and our grassland in the spring. To calve in January we need either exceptional shed facilities with creep areas, or a very dry prevailing farm soil carrying a bank of grass ora very dry portion of the farm over winter – ideally both. Glen has both.

“We turned 10 cows and 11 calves out to our driest paddock here on Thursday last (22 February). Dillon and I had been walking the farm and knew what parts remained dry and what parts were still wet. I had been talking to locals in the days previous and saturated land had been a big topic. I bit my tongue. I suppose the BETTER farm programme has taught me to concentrate on what’s going on within my own walls. There are probably no other farms with cattle out in the area and in previous years I wouldn’t have dreamt of it. Our early grass measuring walks were certainly a big help in reassuring us that we could go early. That said, there are still areas of the farm we wouldn’t dream of going to,” Glen added.

It must be stated that Glen and Dillon are excellent grassland managers. Two hundred tonnes of lime spread in 2017 reaped dividends – soil pH has risen by 0.3-0.5 units. Opening farm cover in early February was over 1,000kg DM/ha and this grass is a huge asset in terms of getting cows out and getting silage out of the diet. Every extra day outdoors at grass keeps €2.80/head in a drystock farmer’s pocket.

Across the farm, there are 38 permanent grazing divisions and there are roadways in operation on both land blocks. These roadways are vital in allowing the duo to target specific dry areas of the farm. This year will see a surface laid down on the roadways, which are currently in grass and rough in places. The McDermotts are also moving to introduce more permanent divisions on the farm.

“After running the paddock system for a couple of years and doing a good deal of grass measuring in 2017, I suppose we’ve enough experience and are confident enough to push the grass thing that bit harder. The white tape reels are handy for splitting paddocks, but you still can’t beat the permanent fence for labour efficiency,” Glen said.

Roadways

The stone for the roadway came for free – a by-product of a tank dug out for a slatted shed that Glen erected in 2005. It has been sitting in the yard since and, though there won’t be enough to cover the whole farm, it will go a long way.

“The roadways are huge for us. We’d find it extremely hard to work AI without them,” Dillon said.

Given the relatively high potential for profit based on previous phases of BETTER farm, a lot of our new participants were keen to finish their male progeny as bulls under 16 months of age. Glen was one of the few farmers given the go-ahead to do so straightaway – the quality was there in the herd to do so. Glen was already achieving high weaning weights and using sires with strong terminal traits.

“We have 14 bulls to slaughter altogether from the 2016/2017 calf crop and six have gone so far. They have averaged U= 392kg at 15 months. All were fine for flesh. Hopefully when I tighten up the calving spread now there will be bigger drafts and tighter ages. I think there’s scope to buy in some more bulls for fattening too going forward to complement our own. In terms of the sires, LGL (CH) and FSZ (CH) lead the way in terms of slaughter performance, followed by LZF (CH) and GED (CH). We also have a bull by ONI (LM) doing quite well,” Glen said.

As of this week, Glen and Dillon have 34 cows calved with 35 calves on the ground. There are six cows left to calve and young calves have been let out to graze around silage ground all winter – returning to the slatted house at night. Thoughts are now turning towards getting this silage ground grazed away so that Glen can take an early, high-quality silage cut, spreading slurry and planning for the upcoming breeding season.

Glen is hosting a national BETTER farm walk on the 10 April with the topics of breeding and preparing for first-cut silage on the agenda. The event will be KT-approved and there will be live cattle and slurry demonstrations as well as an opportunity to see the benefits of lime spreading and grazing infrastructure in real time. We hope to see you there.

Glen’s farm is in transition, as he is building cow numbers and changing system. He has made a great start to the BETTER farm challenge focusing on soil fertility in year 1. The stock on the farm are powerful, something you would expect from using 100% AI. Moving Glen to an u16 month bull system was a no-brainer given the weight of calves at weaning and housing to cater for greater numbers already on the farm. If he can make further improvements in grassland management and carry a stocking rate of 2.5LU/ha he will break the €1,000/ha gross margin easily.