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One thing becomes immediately clear when you converse with Joe Healy on his farm – he is grasping his BETTER farm opportunity with both hands. Enthusiasm, work ethic and a willingness to change – three vital traits for a BETTER beef farmer – are three traits that Joe Healy exhibits in spades.
One thing becomes immediately clear when you converse with Joe Healy on his farm – he is grasping his BETTER farm opportunity with both hands. Enthusiasm, work ethic and a willingness to change – three vital traits for a BETTER beef farmer – are three traits that Joe Healy exhibits in spades.
Joe farms 44ha, split into two blocks, near Athboy in Co Meath. His soils are clay-based but certain areas are very heavy relative to the rest of Meath.
This is one of the reasons for Joe’s unique calving pattern. He calves the majority of the 70-strong, continental-breed herd in April, with the balance in May and June. At this time, both weather and ground conditions, he feels, tend towards a more favourable calving environment. Scour also reared its ugly head for years when Joe was operating a more conventional spring-calving spread. Having decided enough was enough, Joe opted to let his season slip back slightly. He now calves almost all of his cows outside in a rough, sacrificial-type paddock from which they move straight to a grassy area before joining the main herd.
“Once that calf hits the deck, the pair are straight to a grassy area and then down the farm in a couple of days.”
Finish
Joe finishes all of his male calves and any non-replacement heifers. In this way, he is not aiming to market a live animal at a specific time like many farmers, giving him leeway with his calving period. Bulls are slaughtered on the grid, under 16 months of age, in the height of summer when beef price is generally at its annual peak. In 2016, Joe slaughtered 34 home-bred bulls, at an average of 15.6 months of age, 393kg carcase weight, U+2+ grade and €1,565/head.
“My bull system is not like your typical spring-calver’s in that my bulls have age on their side as yearlings and can get to grass for a period before finishing (unlike a spring-born bull, who doesn’t go to grass for a second season). I try to get them out as early as possible on to my very best grass. You have to keep the quality under them, though I force them to graze tight when conditions allow. The last few weeks have been good for pushing those boys to eat right down. They get meal at grass to ready them for finishing and then 100 days of ad lib indoors prior to slaughter.
Having followed BETTER farm for years and implementing the practices and systems that he saw in the programme, Joe is near the top of the new cohort of BETTER farmers in terms of a starting point. Stocking rate and output levels are key to beef farm profits and in 2016 Joe was already carrying almost twice the amount of cattle relative to the average Irish beef farm hectare (at 2.71 LU/ha).
In terms of producing liveweight, his is more than twice as productive (992kg/ha) than the average Irish beef farm (477kg). Joe generated a healthy gross margin of €1,045/ha in 2016, but he is not resting on his laurels.
“I think we can push things a bit further. I’d like to go to 85 cows. The bull system frees up grassland. Maybe there is scope to get my bulls moving on meals a bit earlier during the winter and get them out younger, without sending them back to grass. Carcase weight might suffer but it would make more room for cows. I currently work in the family steel fabrication business. While it’s great for the farm in that I have the avenue to erect farm buildings in a very cost-effective way, my goal is to go farming full-time at some point. However, I have a young family to support. While the farm is in a good place, it is quite far removed from where it needs to be to do this, in my view.”
2017 problems
For all of the farm’s success, calving 2017 has been a difficult time for Joe. As of 30 May, there were 10 animals of the 75 to calve and Joe had lost seven calves early on in the season.
“Yeah, a tough start – things looked bleak for a while. But we got back on track quite quickly. There were calves born dead, abortions, deformities and weak calves that lived only for a couple of days. It was a really strange period – normally our mortality is almost zero. If all goes to plan from here on in, I’ll finish with a mortality figure of around 8-9%. It’ll be a year to forget, but you can’t let these things get you down. Farming throws these curveballs at you every now and again that you have to take on the chin and move on from,” Joe said.
I talked to Padraig Farrell, Joe’s vet, about his calving problems.
“Joe endured a torrid start to calving 2017 but has gotten well back on track since. We sent a couple of samples away and a rare strain of bacteria called Streptococcus pluranimalium, last documented in Scotland in 2011 showed up in preliminary tests. It is accredited for causing sporadic abortions. That said, in my own opinion, there was something else sinister at play in this part of the world this spring. I came across around 50 stillborn dwarf calves that had gone full-term on my rounds – which was a first. We saw Schmallenberg coming back this year, who’s to say the vector that brought it back didn’t bring in something else too?” Padraig said.
Calf performance
Joe uses as much AI as he can on the farm. His 2016 calf crop boast progeny from a cocktail of proven and test sires such as OKH, UPI, NUF, ADX, THZ, KZH, ZAG, WGE (Limousins), VUL, ZKY, ZYH (Parthenaise), LJE, SGA (Blonde d’Aquataine), EKB, JKS (Belgian Blue), LGL (Charloais) and VEZ (Aubrac). At 10.6 months of age, in late-March 2017, the 76-strong calf crop had achieved an average of 1.04kg of daily weight gain from birth. Bulls had grown at a rate of 1.10kg/day, with heifers hitting 0.97kg/day. Sires of note were EKB, with four calves averaging 1.13kg/day, LGL with two animals hitting 1.2kg/day, ZYH with eight animals achieving 1.17kg/day and SGA with nine animals doing 1.07kg/day.
Adviser comment
Tommy Cox
Right from the off, it was clear from Joe’s attitude and enthusiasm that he was keen to take the farm to the next level. The farm was previously a dairy operation so there is excellent infrastructure already in place. The stock on the farm are of exceptional quality and this is testament to the hard work during the breeding season. The plan to increase cow numbers will be easily achievable as every year top-quality high-index heifers are being bred from within the herd. I believe this farm will perform well over the course of the programme due to Joe’s openness and willingness to adopt the new technologies available to him to make the farm more efficient and profitable.
Farmers at this week’s Teagasc national sheep conferences were told that thin ewes are a continual drain on productivity and increase the risk of disease establishing.
This is a subscriber-only article
For all of the farm’s success, calving 2017 has been a difficult time for Joe. As of 30 May, there were 10 animals of the 75 to calve and Joe had lost seven calves early on in the season. 
Right from the off, it was clear from Joe’s attitude and enthusiasm that he was keen to take the farm to the next level. The farm was previously a dairy operation so there is excellent infrastructure already in place. The stock on the farm are of exceptional quality and this is testament to the hard work during the breeding season. The plan to increase cow numbers will be easily achievable as every year top-quality high-index heifers are being bred from within the herd. I believe this farm will perform well over the course of the programme due to Joe’s openness and willingness to adopt the new technologies available to him to make the farm more efficient and profitable. 
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