End of the suckling era on Duggan farm in Portlaw

Farm facts

You could feel the emotion in John Duggan’s voice when he was given the microphone to welcome a large crowd to his farm last Tuesday for the first of a series of Teagasc grass walks being held around the country.

Like many suckler farmers John spent his life working hard at suckling and reaping big rewards from breeding quality stock.

He perfected the system of producing E-grade Belgian Blue weanlings out of black Limousin cows. He wasn’t afraid to invest in good stock having brought in bulls from Belgium in his time and as he says himself, they made him up.

John is always a man who shoots from the hip and some great debates have taken place over the years at farm walks around the country on the back of a curve ball thrown by John. “Any profit we made from the farm was reinvested to help us do a better job”.

Paul came home farming in 2005 and as with all businesses, when you bring in young blood with new ideas and drive, things grow and this has resulted in a successful farm, contracting and cattle haulage business which comes under the Duggan Agri & Livestock umbrella.

John was quick to point out last Tuesday that everything that has been achieved on the farm is on the back of a team approach. John, and his wife Anne, Paul and his wife Clodagh and their son Jack are all cogs in the wheel that keep all the enterprises ticking over.

Although the Duggan farm has seen many changes over the years the decision to cease the suckler cow enterprise was a major decision and one which was influenced by John’s age of 78 and the fact that Paul’s health continues to be a challenge.

Paul had a kidney transplant in 2009, he then had treatment for Burkitts Lymphoma in 2022 which resulted in kidney rejection and now this means Paul must do haemodialysis every other day for a minimum of four hours.

All going well he will go back on the transplant list once he is five years cancer free. These factors had to be taken into account and the realisation set in that it is time for change.

Suckler success

The Duggans agree that the suckler cow has been very good to them and has been the foundation stone for everything that has been achieved, however, its clear to see they are visibly disappointed to see them going out of the yard.

The 90 cow suckler herd calved last autumn for the last time, and most of the cows will be finished over the next two months. The autumn born bulls will be slaughtered at 16 months and the heifers at 24 months.

The process of purchasing heifers for fattening has begun to replace the suckler herd. John stated “things don’t stay the same forever and who knows I have a feeling with young Jack chomping at the bit to get going, it might not be that long until there will be sucklers in the calving pens again in Portlaw”

Nobody more that Paul has learned that having the ability to adapt and change is crucially important and when asked for one last quote he says “carry a donor card”

Spring N fertiliser advice

The timing of the first application of fertiliser N should be matched to the stocking rate and turnout date of your farm.

That was the advice from Teagasc Signpost programme climate and sustainability adviser Seamus Kearney at the Duggan farm walk last week. Soil temperature is important and must be close to five degrees Celsius and rising at the time of application.

You also need to make sure there is no heavy rain forecast immediately after spreading. Target drier fields with good soil fertility (pH > 6.2; P and K Index 3+).

You should also aim the first fertiliser application for fields with at least 6cm of grass on them. Slurry is a valuable nitrogen source and farmers should have the majority of their slurry spread by mid-April on drier farms.

Reseeding

Target recently reseeded fields with a high perennial ryegrass content which will give the best response to nitrogen fertiliser. An early application of 2,000-2,500 gallons of slurry will replace 20-25kg fertiliser N/Ha (16-20 units of fertiliser N/ac).

Slurry should be targeted to first cut silage areas and areas with low P and K status. All slurry should be applied using Low Emission Slurry Spreading technique (LESS) to optimise nutrient availability.

There was some discussion at the Duggan walk around protected urea and what farmer’s experience of it was.

Seamus Kearney used a simple analogy to explain the difference between spreading protected urea and conventional fertiliser using a golf ball and a ping pong ball. He got Paul’s son Jack to through both balls as far as he could.

The golf ball being heavier naturally travelled the furthest while the ping pong ball being lighter didn’t travel as far despite the best efforts of Jack.

“Protected urea is a lighter product so we need to be conscious of that when setting spreading widths and take them back.” It was interesting to note that when the question came around using protected urea at this time of year in cold damp conditions Seamus was advocating its use at all time.

There was a previous thought that protected urea wasn’t required at the shoulders of the year where the chances of losses were less than during a dry period of weather.

“ You will lose more nitrogen in monetary terms from spreading ordinary urea compared to spreading protected urea even when you take account of the extra cost associated with protected urea.”

Seamus also had a really simple way of identifying paddocks on the farm that are low for P and K using the tops of milk cartons.

The caps can be nailed to the posts at the entrances to fields or paddocks and are an easy way of highlighting where P and K should be spread. A green cap is Index 3 and 4 while a red cap is index 1 and 2.

The top cap is P and the bottom carton cap is K so it’s another very quick visual way when you are on the tractor of where to spread the compound fertiliser.

Water quality and environmental standards come hand in hand with any farm walk nowadays and rightly so.

There were some clear messages around buffer zones for slurry and fertiliser with a different level of risk being explained at different times of the year.

Marie Kearny from Teagasc gave an excellent visual demonstration of buffer widths from drains for slurry and fertiliser.

The key message was to maximise the value of your chemical/organic fertiliser by spreading in the right location (drier fields), at the right time (good temperatures, no soil moisture deficits i.e drought or waterlogged or no heavy rain forecast and good growth rates), right rates (meeting crop demand and growth rate) and right product (LESS application).

The definition of a buffer zone is an area of land next to a water feature (stream or open surface drain) where certain agricultural activities are prohibited. The width of the buffer zone depends on the agricultural activity.

For example in Waterford and Kilkenny the slurry spreading season goes from 13 Jan to 30 September.

The buffer zone for slurry is 10 metres from 13 to 27 January and 10 metres from 16 to 30 September and 5 metres for the rest of the year. For chemical fertiliser the spreading season is from 27 January to 14 September with a three metre buffer zone being required during this time.

Table 1 shows a Nitrogen fertiliser and slurry application plan for the early spring period on heavy soil, less intensive and/or later turnout farms.

Beef Budgets

The costings in Table 3 are included at 6c/kg for grass per kg dry matter.

Grass silage is costed in at 18c/kg/DM. Meal is costed into the above budget at 4,340/tonne and a 55% kill out has been estimated for both systems.

The system that is leaving the most money is finishing off grass around the 1 October as opposed to the housed system and coming out around 15 December.

The housed system would also attract more fixed costs in terms of shed upkeep, light and slurry spreading.

There may be a higher kill out % achieved with more meal in the diet but a price rise would be required to justify the housing of the heifers.

Interestingly if we took a €7/kg figure for beef price next autumn and put in the heifers today at €3.80 for 380kg the grass system would be delivering a margin of €582/head over feed and purchase cost.

Obviously, there are other costs to factor in but all the talk at the moment is that store cattle prices are crazy. Whether they are crazy or not will depend on where the beef price ends up this autumn. If they hold at €7/kg, there’s a decent margin to be made but if they drop, it’ll be a different story.