Michael O’Leary from Teagasc was first to take the podium, with a focus on best utilising grass this spring. He emphasised the need for farmers to get the most out of grass growth at the two shoulders of the year – spring and autumn.

He encouraged farmers to get stock out early to help kickstart growth. Looking at figures from the 1,000 farmers sending in measurements through Pasturebase, he stressed that the main factor holding back growth on farms was not location but rather management.

Farms are well able to grow over 12t DM/ha of grass if they put the right system in place. One of the main factors holding beef farmers back, in his experience, was that they were poor at making critical decisions but they were good at walking farms and measuring grass.

Mervyn Parr from Teagasc Grange focused on optimising reproductive farm efficiency in the suckler herd. He presented results from two trials. The first result was on epidemiology, where he looked at the presence of different infectious pathogens in vaccinated and non-vaccinated herds. A total of 155 herds were used for the trial, encompassing 5,554 cows.

His second trial focused on breeding management and the use of AI. He examined the use of synchronisation and fixed-time AI on over 2,205 cows. He compared the cost of using a stock bull, which was €52 per cow per year for a 30-cow suckler herd. While using synchronisation with fixed-time AI on a herd of the same size cost between €47 and €62 per cow per year.

Managing finances

Peter Young from the Irish Farmers Journal gave a talk on how to improve financial management on your farm. He emphasised the need to set goals, which are different for each farmer, on what they want to get from their farm. He outlined the need for farmers to balance the management of the day-to-day farming activities with the financial planning needed for the farm to succeed.

The importance of developing a monthly cashflow budget on the farm could not be understated. He did accept that you would not get it perfect the first time but the more experience you get, the more accurate your monthly cashflow budgets would get. With volatile prices common for farmers, the aim is to focus on what you can control.

The conference was sponsored by Gene Ireland and Mullinahone Co-op.