Sheep grassland farmer of the year is brilliant at the basics

Sheep grassland farmer of the year winner Tomas O’Leary runs a mid-season flock of 230 mature Belclare and Suffolk ewes on his farm near Beaufort, Co Kerry.

He also runs an 80-ewe lambs and this year he is on target to rear two lambs/ewe.

Lambing starts on 1 March, with the ewe lambs lambing two weeks later.

Tomas farms in two locations, 16 miles apart. To manage this, he takes silage from the smaller home farm of 45 acres at Headford and the main grazing platform consists of 75 acres at Beaufort.

This week, well in excess of 100 farmers attended the open day on his farm.

Challenging year

In 2017, Tomas grew 13.5t/ha.

After a challenging spring and six weeks with no grass growth at the height of last summer’s drought, he grew 4t/ha less in 2018.

The benefit of getting the basics right were plain to see.

With the farm stocked heavily at 12 ewes/ha, Tomas has an efficient system setup.

Brilliant at the basics

There is excellent infrastructure in place from a central roadway to 18 paddocks fenced with sheep wire.

Almost all of these paddocks have water points at each end, offering opportunities to subdivide with temporary fences when required.

A focus has been placed on getting soil fertility right and regular soil sampling and lime applications when required have enabled Tomas to get high grass yields.

Contract rearing

A beef and sheep farmer, Tomas has run different cattle systems on the farm over the last number of years and since last autumn, the cattle enterprise consists of contract-rearing dairy heifers.

Normally, Tomas practices mixed grazing of sheep and cattle, but due to the breeding season for the heifers, he ran them as a separate group to simplify the workload.

Read more

Well-designed sheep scheme working well

Finding a happy balance with grassland management