Map: Ballykelly, Monasterevin, Co Kildare.Farm size: 200 acres (11 different blocks).Cow numbers: 80 Holstein
Friesian cows.System: Spring milk and finishing, all Hereford progeny.In 2020, Aidan Byrne joined the then Glanbia now Tirlán/Kepak 2020 programme feeling it was the right fit for his farm. While many dairy farmers have moved away from finishing any dairy-beef progeny on their farm, some still finish the cattle that they produce.
Fragmented holdings are one of the main reasons some farmers continue to finish the animals bred on their farm. Aidan Byrne is one of those farmers. He farms 200 acres across 11 different blocks, all within a four-mile radius.
He farms alongside his father George Byrne and with his two sons, 13 year-old Mark and Jack who is nine. (It’s actually not Aidan’s first time to be featured in the Irish Farmers Journal: he, his son, Mark; his father, George; and his grandfather, George – four generations of the Byrne family – were pictured on their farm in July 2011.)
They farm in a place called Ballykelly just outside Monasterevin in Co Kildare.
Heifers are finished at 22 months with bullocks finished at 24 months on the Byrne farm.
Rather than drive on with cow numbers in recent years, Aidan has kept cow numbers steady over the last few years. He is calving 80 cows and milking 75 with all the progeny finished on the farm at 20-24 months.
“We got badly burnt up here in the drought in 2018,” he says, “and we actually had to buy in 100 bales. It was a stressful time and we just said how do we avoid this happening again.
“There’s enough stress in life without looking for more of it, so we decided to finish the cattle earlier without a second grazing season and now we are able to make about 100 bales or so off the grazing and a little more silage ground closed up.
“To be honest we have fed bales during high summer for a number of the last few years,” he says.
“It’s just something you have to be prepared for now. It’s part of the peaks and troughs of modern day farming.”
Aidan says there is also more to life than milking cows.
“You’ll laugh at this, but there’s nothing me and the lads love more than going out on the boat we have to fish during the year. We like to keep the system as simple as we can, you cut your cloth to suit you and that’s what we’ve done.”
The Byrnes have always finished their own progeny on the farm so it was a no brainer to join the Tirlán/Kepak scheme.
“I did give it a lot of thought and I went to two information meetings to make sure I wasn’t missing anything,” Aidan explains.
We reckon it’s delivering a big financial benefit to the farm
“To be perfectly honest, I don’t see a downside to it. We are getting the 30c/kg bonus for ticking the boxes that we are asked to tick on top of a Hereford bonus of 20c/kg and that’s it.
“We reckon it’s delivering a big financial benefit to the farm and you’re also getting that bit of help and technical advice as well. The factory knows when our cattle are going, but the pricing is all very transparent and works off an average price in the Irish Farmers Journal every week. We are very happy with the way it’s working.”
Stock bulls
Aidan places a big emphasis on getting the right type of stock bull onto the farm.
“We have been dealing with the Fitzgerald family in Mount Temple for a good few years and we like the bulls that they are breeding and they have been lucky for us,” he says.
He prefers the Hereford breed over any other breed because they bring the easy calving, but also bring some size and scope to the calves which is important to hold weight. There are currently two Hereford bulls on the farm. Grianan Apollo, with a dairy beef index of €135 and Grianan Waterloo, with a dairy beef index of €123.
Aidan looks for a combination of good figures and good conformation when buying stock bulls for his farm.
“We let one bull out during the day with the cows and the other bull goes out at night. This helps to compact our calving season.”
For Aidan, the bulls have to have the conformation coupled with the figures.
“We are looking for a bull with good length, has good legs and feet, good conformation and a calving figure of about 3-3.5%,” he says. “My father always said animal performance is one third the bull, one third the cow and the rest is management.”
The mix is working on the Byrne farm with the spring 2023-born heifers averaging 286kg at 22 months with the majority grading O= or O+.
Carcase weights ranged from 245kg to 321kg.
Two heifers didn’t make the minimum weight of 260kg for the scheme, but still received the breed bonus.
Bullocks are also performing very well on the farm, coming in at 350kg deadweight at 24 months.
We are also getting pretty much the same carcase weights four months earlier
“We used to finish the heifers from May onwards and the bullocks from July onwards,” Aidan says, “so we’ve fed a little more and we have pulled back the slaughter dates as part of the programme. We are also getting pretty much the same carcase weights four months earlier.”
This has also freed up some extra silage ground during the summer months. It’s not all down to the bull though with Aidan paying attention to the type of cow he has on the farm.
“I suppose when you are finishing your own cattle, you see the effect that cow type can have on the finished article, so you’re more conscious of it.
“Maybe if I was selling the calves and not seeing the cattle finish, I wouldn’t pay as much attention to it.”
The Byrnes keep a good square Holstein Friesian cow, not too sharp.
Aidan buys all his replacements from a local dairy farmer who he has built a relationship with. This means it keeps the system very simple; with all cows being bred to the Hereford bull.
The dairy cows are still producing 500kg of solids, so the better conformation isn’t taking away from production too much. The herd’s fertility is also good with 83% calved in six weeks in 2024.
Calf rearing
Calves are fed whole milk during the rearing phase on the farm. They are fed up to 5l/day during the first 10-12 weeks along with ad-lib calf crunch and weaned in mid-May.
“We try and keep health our number-one priority during the calving season with no visitors allowed into the calf shed.
“It’s just about taking out the risks.”
Cows are vaccinated for salmonella, BVD and leptospirosis. The calves are grazed in a paddock system during the summer months; moving to after grass towards the end of the grazing season.
It’s our co-op, so I think we should be supporting it anyway
Once housed, they go onto the best-quality silage and are fed about 1.5/kg/day of weanling ration. They are generally turned back out in April to another paddock system as there isn’t an option to come back in on the out farms which they graze.
As part of the Tirlán/Kepak 2020 scheme, Aidan has to buy all his inputs from Tírlan. This includes fertiliser, meal and animal health products.
This drew some criticism at the start of the programme but it isn’t a problem for Aidan.
“It’s our co-op, so I think we should be supporting it anyway,” he says. “They have a commercial business to run. I want to be loyal to the co-op, so I would be buying my inputs there anyway.”
Map: Ballykelly, Monasterevin, Co Kildare.Farm size: 200 acres (11 different blocks).Cow numbers: 80 Holstein
Friesian cows.System: Spring milk and finishing, all Hereford progeny.In 2020, Aidan Byrne joined the then Glanbia now Tirlán/Kepak 2020 programme feeling it was the right fit for his farm. While many dairy farmers have moved away from finishing any dairy-beef progeny on their farm, some still finish the cattle that they produce.
Fragmented holdings are one of the main reasons some farmers continue to finish the animals bred on their farm. Aidan Byrne is one of those farmers. He farms 200 acres across 11 different blocks, all within a four-mile radius.
He farms alongside his father George Byrne and with his two sons, 13 year-old Mark and Jack who is nine. (It’s actually not Aidan’s first time to be featured in the Irish Farmers Journal: he, his son, Mark; his father, George; and his grandfather, George – four generations of the Byrne family – were pictured on their farm in July 2011.)
They farm in a place called Ballykelly just outside Monasterevin in Co Kildare.
Heifers are finished at 22 months with bullocks finished at 24 months on the Byrne farm.
Rather than drive on with cow numbers in recent years, Aidan has kept cow numbers steady over the last few years. He is calving 80 cows and milking 75 with all the progeny finished on the farm at 20-24 months.
“We got badly burnt up here in the drought in 2018,” he says, “and we actually had to buy in 100 bales. It was a stressful time and we just said how do we avoid this happening again.
“There’s enough stress in life without looking for more of it, so we decided to finish the cattle earlier without a second grazing season and now we are able to make about 100 bales or so off the grazing and a little more silage ground closed up.
“To be honest we have fed bales during high summer for a number of the last few years,” he says.
“It’s just something you have to be prepared for now. It’s part of the peaks and troughs of modern day farming.”
Aidan says there is also more to life than milking cows.
“You’ll laugh at this, but there’s nothing me and the lads love more than going out on the boat we have to fish during the year. We like to keep the system as simple as we can, you cut your cloth to suit you and that’s what we’ve done.”
The Byrnes have always finished their own progeny on the farm so it was a no brainer to join the Tirlán/Kepak scheme.
“I did give it a lot of thought and I went to two information meetings to make sure I wasn’t missing anything,” Aidan explains.
We reckon it’s delivering a big financial benefit to the farm
“To be perfectly honest, I don’t see a downside to it. We are getting the 30c/kg bonus for ticking the boxes that we are asked to tick on top of a Hereford bonus of 20c/kg and that’s it.
“We reckon it’s delivering a big financial benefit to the farm and you’re also getting that bit of help and technical advice as well. The factory knows when our cattle are going, but the pricing is all very transparent and works off an average price in the Irish Farmers Journal every week. We are very happy with the way it’s working.”
Stock bulls
Aidan places a big emphasis on getting the right type of stock bull onto the farm.
“We have been dealing with the Fitzgerald family in Mount Temple for a good few years and we like the bulls that they are breeding and they have been lucky for us,” he says.
He prefers the Hereford breed over any other breed because they bring the easy calving, but also bring some size and scope to the calves which is important to hold weight. There are currently two Hereford bulls on the farm. Grianan Apollo, with a dairy beef index of €135 and Grianan Waterloo, with a dairy beef index of €123.
Aidan looks for a combination of good figures and good conformation when buying stock bulls for his farm.
“We let one bull out during the day with the cows and the other bull goes out at night. This helps to compact our calving season.”
For Aidan, the bulls have to have the conformation coupled with the figures.
“We are looking for a bull with good length, has good legs and feet, good conformation and a calving figure of about 3-3.5%,” he says. “My father always said animal performance is one third the bull, one third the cow and the rest is management.”
The mix is working on the Byrne farm with the spring 2023-born heifers averaging 286kg at 22 months with the majority grading O= or O+.
Carcase weights ranged from 245kg to 321kg.
Two heifers didn’t make the minimum weight of 260kg for the scheme, but still received the breed bonus.
Bullocks are also performing very well on the farm, coming in at 350kg deadweight at 24 months.
We are also getting pretty much the same carcase weights four months earlier
“We used to finish the heifers from May onwards and the bullocks from July onwards,” Aidan says, “so we’ve fed a little more and we have pulled back the slaughter dates as part of the programme. We are also getting pretty much the same carcase weights four months earlier.”
This has also freed up some extra silage ground during the summer months. It’s not all down to the bull though with Aidan paying attention to the type of cow he has on the farm.
“I suppose when you are finishing your own cattle, you see the effect that cow type can have on the finished article, so you’re more conscious of it.
“Maybe if I was selling the calves and not seeing the cattle finish, I wouldn’t pay as much attention to it.”
The Byrnes keep a good square Holstein Friesian cow, not too sharp.
Aidan buys all his replacements from a local dairy farmer who he has built a relationship with. This means it keeps the system very simple; with all cows being bred to the Hereford bull.
The dairy cows are still producing 500kg of solids, so the better conformation isn’t taking away from production too much. The herd’s fertility is also good with 83% calved in six weeks in 2024.
Calf rearing
Calves are fed whole milk during the rearing phase on the farm. They are fed up to 5l/day during the first 10-12 weeks along with ad-lib calf crunch and weaned in mid-May.
“We try and keep health our number-one priority during the calving season with no visitors allowed into the calf shed.
“It’s just about taking out the risks.”
Cows are vaccinated for salmonella, BVD and leptospirosis. The calves are grazed in a paddock system during the summer months; moving to after grass towards the end of the grazing season.
It’s our co-op, so I think we should be supporting it anyway
Once housed, they go onto the best-quality silage and are fed about 1.5/kg/day of weanling ration. They are generally turned back out in April to another paddock system as there isn’t an option to come back in on the out farms which they graze.
As part of the Tirlán/Kepak 2020 scheme, Aidan has to buy all his inputs from Tírlan. This includes fertiliser, meal and animal health products.
This drew some criticism at the start of the programme but it isn’t a problem for Aidan.
“It’s our co-op, so I think we should be supporting it anyway,” he says. “They have a commercial business to run. I want to be loyal to the co-op, so I would be buying my inputs there anyway.”
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