You could say it was love at first sight for Jan Douglas and Liam Carroll.

For Speckle Park cattle, that is.

“Liam had seen Speckle Parks out doing a [veterinary] call somewhere and he said: ‘Oh Jan, look at these,’” she recalls.

“We went to see a few and I really loved them. They were something different but yet they kind of ticked every box.”

As for Jan and Liam’s first encounter, we’ll get back to that later.

Together, the couple are working to build Rocky Island Speckle Park (named after a field on the home farm) as a pedigree cattle breeding enterprise, as well as finding new markets for their beef.

This is all while trying to promote the breed they are passionate about – so passionate, in fact, that they even used the names of their favourite cows for the seating plan at their wedding.

Farming start-up

Neither Jan nor Liam have a background in pedigree cattle.

Indeed Jan, who grew up on a dairy and beef farm in Ballivor, Co Meath, fell into studying agricultural science almost by accident after she needed to take on another honours subject for her Leaving Cert.

“I kind of picked it up late in fifth year and I just loved it and that’s when I decided I might pursue it,” she says, explaining how she specialised in animal and crop nutrition at University College Dublin (UCD), followed by a master’s in nutrition.

It was during the master’s that she first met Liam – who grew up on a dairy farm in Castlecomer, Co Kilkenny, and studied veterinary in Hungary – after she called him to look at a sick heifer.

“We got off to a rocky start … he can tell you that one,” she says.

“I thought it [the heifer] couldn’t be fixed,” Liam explains. “That didn’t go down terrible well at the time.”

So what happened?

“I cured the second heifer,” he responds. “So that was the trick.”

After graduating, Jan worked for three different nutrition companies, but recently started a new role as breeding programme development co-ordinator with Progressive Genetics. Liam, meanwhile, works with Blackwater Veterinary Clinic in Co Meath.

Despite two busy jobs in the agri industry, however, the couple were anxious to farm in their own right.

“We were going out to farms all the time advising farmers on what to be doing or what not to be doing. But if you’re doing it yourself you’re also in a better position to do your job,” says Jan.

“We enjoy working with animals and there’s kind of a sense of pride in having your own stock and knowing you’ve done a good job.”

Speckle Parks

Initially, Jan and Liam rented some land to bucket-rear Angus and Hereford calves but soon felt that it wasn’t financially viable in the long-term. They were researching getting into pedigrees when Liam came across some Speckle Park cross-cattle on a veterinary callout one day.

“I did a bit of research into them and stumbled across a couple of heifers for sale in Galway,” says Liam of the Speckle Park, which is a breed that was developed in Canada in the 1960s and introduced to Ireland in 2007.

“As a breed they suit us,” he continues. “They’re easy calved, they’re easy fleshed, they’re very docile. The beef industry is changing a little bit there now as well. They don’t want the real massive carcase weights for the factories and stuff, so Speckle Park have a nice medium-sized carcase for that. With everything changing with the environment too, they are very easy finish. They have a lower slaughter age as well, which is a big attraction… and they look nice.”

Jan and Liam bought their first two Speckle Park pedigree heifers in 2018, but say their biggest challenge in building their own Rocky Island pedigree herd was trying to source stock in Ireland.

“We’ve travelled the length of the country,” says Jan of building their 17-strong herd. “Even if you want to buy stock, they’re snapped up immediately. They are sought after and they’re rare.”

However, they both credit the Irish Speckle Park Cattle Society – of which Liam is now vice chair – for its support.

For instance, they helped them to source Premier Logic, a bull (AI) from New Zealand, with his first progeny born recently, along with embryos from Canada, which are due to be calved down this spring.

In total, they are expecting 14 purebred calves this spring – including four from the embryo transfers – while this will also be their first year selling their own pedigree bulls, with three ready to go.

Their plan is to sell to dairy farmers, as they feel the Speckle Park breed has many advantages.

“The big thing is that they’re easy calving, they’re relatively short gestation, they’re polled so they don’t grow horns, which means dehorning calves is one less job for dairy farmers to be doing. Other than that, they also look really well,” says Jan.

“They’re a serious breed I suppose,” continues Liam.

“They were the second-most-used beef sire on dairy cows in Australia/New Zealand last year.”

Beef to butcher

The other side of the business is producing commercial Speckle Park beef.

Having teamed up with two local dairy farmers who are now using Speckle Park straws on their dairy cows, Jan and Liam then buy in mostly heifer calves, which they rear on milk replacer and finish on grass for 18 to 20 months.

They sell to local butcher, Michael Newman, and have recently started supplying Higgins’ Butchers in Sutton, Co Dublin.

Like the breeding, this side of the business is still growing – rearing about 20 calves a year – but the reaction from customers has been very positive.

“People like knowing where it’s coming from and shopping local. Like for me, you can go into a supermarket and buy two steaks on a plastic tray and it’s gone on several lorries to get to where it is now, but that’s not the case [here],” says Jan, who was accepted on to the ACORNS programme to develop the business.

In 2020, Jan and Liam took another step forward in their farming journey when they bought their own house – a “doer-upper”– along with 10 acres of land and a yard.

“We’ve had the most expensive 12 months of our life,” jokes Jan, in reference to the fact that they also got married last year. “It’s been a huge time of investment, so I can’t wait to have some animals to sell,”

Between their day jobs and their own farm, they are now coming into their busiest season. Their unique skillsets obviously give them a great advantage for their own enterprise – though when you work together, a sense of humour comes in handy too.

“If we are going to have a row, it’s going to be in the cattle yard,” jokes Jan.

“Jan would always be slagging me about how much I love all the fencing and getting the grass right,” laughs Liam.

“But I enjoy that and I love seeing a field of happy cattle out eating grass and doing well. There would be something wrong with you if you didn’t enjoy looking at that, especially with our backgrounds.”

For further information, follow @rockyisland_speckleparkbeef on Instagram