Teagasc has appointed a new cattle specialist, Kerry man Niall Kerins. Kerins will be based at Teagasc Moorepark.

This new role will see the drystock farmer cover the south west of the country. Niall Kerins' new role gives him the opportunity “to bring technical messages to cattle farmers”, he said.

Kerins’ previous role with Teagasc was as a business and technology drystock advisor in the Kerry/Limerick advisory region.

He graduated from Cork Institute of Technology with a bachelor of science in agriculture before taking on a bachelor of science in land management in the Waterford Institute of Technology (now SETU). The Kerry-man later went on and completed a masters in agricultural extension and innovation with University College Dublin.

Kerins explained that he “acknowledges that beef farming in Ireland has its challenges, emphasising the importance of grassland management along with animal breeding/husbandry can aid farmers to enhance the environmental sustainability of their enterprises while also being profitable”.

He said that he will now be working with “farmers and their advisors on the Teagasc Future Beef programme and the Dairy Beef500 programme where we continue to build resilient beef farming systems for the future”.

Pearse Kelly is head of the Teagasc drystock knowledge transfer department. He described the role by saying “we provide the technical knowledge from the Teagasc research programme to help farmers on the ground meet the challenges facing the sector and to embrace the opportunities that are emerging”.