At just shy of 295 acres, John Dunne’s farm near Portarlington in Co Offaly is one of the biggest in the programme. In 2016, 100 continental cows calved in the spring. John’s calving pattern is tight, with 88% dropping in eight weeks from early February. Towards the end of his calving season, he begins to take in batches of dairy-cross calves to rear. Though he takes all of his suckler progeny to finish, the suckler herd itself is small relative the amount of hectares John has to fill. This is where the dairy-beef enterprise comes in – an easy way to drive on-farm output without the hassle of calving more cows. At present there are 54 Hereford-cross calves being reared in batches throughout the yard.

When designing farm plans, there are a number of targets the team aims to hit. With most of the farms in the BETTER farm programme understocked relative to the country’s most profitable beef enterprises, getting more animals on the ground and more beef out the gate is generally a big part of the planning process. John’s 2016 stocking rate was 1.86 LU/ha. While this is over half a livestock unit per hectare more than the average Irish beef farm, the average Irish beef farm is not financially viable and thus not a benchmark to concern ourselves with.

Two blocks

John’s farm is laid out in two blocks, both of which are free draining and have the potential for lengthy grazing seasons and big grass growth.

John will look to push stocking rate well beyond 2LU/ha and get more beef out the gate. In 2016 he produced 491kg of liveweight per hectare; the national average on Irish beef farms is 477kg. Indeed, the most profitable farms in phase two of the BETTER farm programme exceed 1,000kg of liveweight output per hectare annually. Mike Dillane topped the financial league tables at the end of BETTER farm phase 2, recording net profit of €1,281/ha (before subsidy). In the same year, he produced 1,241kg of liveweight per hectare at a stocking rate of 2.58LU/ha. Donal Scully, another BETTER success story, achieved a net margin of €1,139/ha at the end of phase 2 with output of 1,412kg/ha. While these farmers operate bull beef systems, meaning a lot of this output is coming off concrete in the finishing shed, steer-producer John will still aim for 800-900kg by the end of his BETTER farm tenure in three years’ time.

How will he do this?

In this phase of BETTER farm, we have placed a big focus on telling a more complete story. There is a bigger focus on fixed costs, farm cashflow and, crucially, labour demand. John’s huge farm is largely a one-man show – his three daughters have pursued off-farm careers and his 15-year-old son, while heavily interested in agriculture, attends boarding school at Cistercian College Roscrea. John has a phenomenal work ethic, but calving 100 cows and then going straight into rearing 50 calves is a huge undertaking for any man.

The fact that John’s calving spread is already impressively tight is a big help – other programme farmers are not so lucky and have a lot of streamlining to do in this area. We asked John to think long and hard about whether he wanted to push on cow numbers or look to other ways of getting farm output up. It was a measure of John’s enthusiasm and drive that he answered straightaway: “I’ll go to 120 cows and double calf numbers.”

John is running maternal Simmental (€151 replacement index, sired by SKU) and Charolais (€128 replacement index, sired by CF51) bulls with his mature cow herd and taking daughters from these. He will look to up numbers naturally from within the farm walls, but must replace both of these bulls this year to avoid running into inbreeding problems. The herd is strong maternally, with an average index value of €92, +6.4kg for daughter milk and -1 days of a calving interval figure. Many herds that opt to grow numbers naturally run into problems around keeping on poor-quality heifers. Given the quality of his herd and its size, John should not have this problem. However, he must remain ruthless with his calving spread and maintain that tightness.

John will continue rearing 50 calves after his calving season in the spring and take in another 50 in the autumn to spread the workload. He tends toward a Hereford-cross calf and tries to source these straight from farm. This, however, is not always possible.

“The majority of the calves I have had to treat for illness are dealer calves. I will look to get more in straight from farms but it’s difficult to find them sometimes,” John told us.

Listen to an interview with John in our podcast below:

Listen to "Ciarán Lenehan speaks to BETTER farmer John Dunne" on Spreaker.

These dairy calves will be finished along with his own animals, with steers going for slaughter at two years of age and heifers prior to a second winter at 18 to 20 months.

Labour will be a massive talking point on this farm. John does almost all of his own machinery work on top of his stock and grassland duties. He has chosen to take part in the farm structures and labour challenge, along with the soil fertility, breeding and mandatory farm finance, farm safety and grass challenges. For this challenge he will measure his working days intermittently throughout the year and quantify his net return per hour worked. There will be an emphasis on streamlining so as to maximise the figure.