Shane and John Hegarty
Leighlinbridge
Co Carlow
While Carlow is renowned as having the best of flat, fertile and free-draining land, the first farm to be featured in the 2024 Sustainable Grassland Farmer of the Year awards is a Carlow farm on anything but easy land.
Farming on the hills overlooking Leighlinbridge with his father John, Shane Hegarty’s farmyard is at 450ft above sea level while the top of the farm is at over 1,000ft.
Shane describes the farm as having very mixed soils from free-draining to very heavy and peaty at the top.
The whole farm is on the slope, with the farmyard in the middle, so the herd has a hard walk every day and there was plenty of panting out of the judges by the time they got to the top of the farm.
Topographical disadvantages aside, performance on the Hegarty farm is really impressive.
With 75ha in the milking platform, there were 220 cows milked in 2024 which is a stocking rate of three cows/ha.
The replacements are contract-reared and silage is coming from leased land within a few kilometres of the farm, some of which is in red clover.
Reseeding
Like all top farmers, Shane is on a clover journey. This year, reseeds had a great take of clover on one paddock and not as good on another, indicating the variability with the plant this year.
He picked the fields for reseeding based on the annual tonnage from 2023 and both fields were in the bottom third for grass growth and he says the quality was poor too.
He reseeded them with 10kg/acre of Nashota grass seed, 2kg of Buddy white clover and 2kg of red clover.
Shane says that while the red clover doesn’t last, it does provide good clover contents in the first year before it’s taken over by all white clover in subsequent years.
Soil pH was a bit lower on the reseeded field where clover didn’t take as well, so that could be the reason why it’s not as good.
At this stage, Shane has 34% of the farm in high to medium clover contents and these areas are receiving reduced rates of chemical nitrogen.
In 2024, the farm applied 200kg N/ha, which is up from 170kg N/ha in previous years.
Shane says that, long term, he would like to be applying 150kg N/ha but would need more of the land at medium to high clover contents to achieve that, he says.
The herd is on track to deliver over 500kg MS/cow and the farm is set to grow over 13t DM/ha in 2024.
Arthur Sweetman
Carrig-on-Bannow
Co Wexford
More often than not, we hear of young people leaving Ireland to go to Australia to set up their lives out there, but Wexford farmer Arthur Sweetman has done the opposite.
He returned home from Australia in 2011 and took over the family farm in 2012.
Farming a total of 82ha, but with 40ha on the milking block, Arthur milked an average of 127 cows in 2024 giving a milking platform stocking rate of 3.17 cows/ha.
While he’s a skilled carpenter by trade, he’s proved to be a skilled farmer too with the herd delivering an impressive 550kg MS/cow.
In his own words, he fell into farming and then fell in love with farming.
The farm is a mix of clay and stony shale land and is located just 2km from the sea so a sea breeze or a wind is one of the main impediments to grass growth and the last two years have been challenging on that front.
The Saltee Islands can be seen from the milking parlour.
Milking
He was milking 138 cows up to 2023 but cut back by 10 in 2024 as he felt he was chasing his tail too much. The farm grew 15t DM/ha last year, but this was back to an expected 13.6t DM/ha in 2024.
The Sweetman herd is high-yielding with the spring-calving cows typically delivering over 550kg MS/cow from a little over 1t of meal per cow, although Arthur says he expects the cows to deliver about 510kg MS/cow in 2024 from between 1.1t and 1.2t of meal per cow plus about 50kg of palm kernel fed per head.
Clover is a big part of the farm and this is something Arthur is working hard on.
At present, about one-third of the farm has good clover content, one-third has some clover and the remaining third has no clover.
He’s using a combination of full reseeding and oversowing to get clover established.
Some multispecies have been sown in the last few years but Arthur has since moved away from it and back to full grass and clover reseeds, feeling that the land is too open with multispecies.
A good man to get cows out to grass in spring, he missed just five days’ grazing in spring 2024 because of the weather.
When asked what the drivers of profit are on the farm, he says grass growth, cow performance and cost control.
In short
There are eight finalists in the Sustainable Grassland Farmer of the Year competition for 2024 between different categories. Each farmer will be featured over the coming weeks including five dairy farmers and three beef farmers. Shane Hegarty is farming near Leighlinbridge in Co Carlow and milking 220 cows.Arthur Sweetman is farming near Carrig-on-Bannow in Co Wexford and milking 127 cows.
Shane and John Hegarty
Leighlinbridge
Co Carlow
While Carlow is renowned as having the best of flat, fertile and free-draining land, the first farm to be featured in the 2024 Sustainable Grassland Farmer of the Year awards is a Carlow farm on anything but easy land.
Farming on the hills overlooking Leighlinbridge with his father John, Shane Hegarty’s farmyard is at 450ft above sea level while the top of the farm is at over 1,000ft.
Shane describes the farm as having very mixed soils from free-draining to very heavy and peaty at the top.
The whole farm is on the slope, with the farmyard in the middle, so the herd has a hard walk every day and there was plenty of panting out of the judges by the time they got to the top of the farm.
Topographical disadvantages aside, performance on the Hegarty farm is really impressive.
With 75ha in the milking platform, there were 220 cows milked in 2024 which is a stocking rate of three cows/ha.
The replacements are contract-reared and silage is coming from leased land within a few kilometres of the farm, some of which is in red clover.
Reseeding
Like all top farmers, Shane is on a clover journey. This year, reseeds had a great take of clover on one paddock and not as good on another, indicating the variability with the plant this year.
He picked the fields for reseeding based on the annual tonnage from 2023 and both fields were in the bottom third for grass growth and he says the quality was poor too.
He reseeded them with 10kg/acre of Nashota grass seed, 2kg of Buddy white clover and 2kg of red clover.
Shane says that while the red clover doesn’t last, it does provide good clover contents in the first year before it’s taken over by all white clover in subsequent years.
Soil pH was a bit lower on the reseeded field where clover didn’t take as well, so that could be the reason why it’s not as good.
At this stage, Shane has 34% of the farm in high to medium clover contents and these areas are receiving reduced rates of chemical nitrogen.
In 2024, the farm applied 200kg N/ha, which is up from 170kg N/ha in previous years.
Shane says that, long term, he would like to be applying 150kg N/ha but would need more of the land at medium to high clover contents to achieve that, he says.
The herd is on track to deliver over 500kg MS/cow and the farm is set to grow over 13t DM/ha in 2024.
Arthur Sweetman
Carrig-on-Bannow
Co Wexford
More often than not, we hear of young people leaving Ireland to go to Australia to set up their lives out there, but Wexford farmer Arthur Sweetman has done the opposite.
He returned home from Australia in 2011 and took over the family farm in 2012.
Farming a total of 82ha, but with 40ha on the milking block, Arthur milked an average of 127 cows in 2024 giving a milking platform stocking rate of 3.17 cows/ha.
While he’s a skilled carpenter by trade, he’s proved to be a skilled farmer too with the herd delivering an impressive 550kg MS/cow.
In his own words, he fell into farming and then fell in love with farming.
The farm is a mix of clay and stony shale land and is located just 2km from the sea so a sea breeze or a wind is one of the main impediments to grass growth and the last two years have been challenging on that front.
The Saltee Islands can be seen from the milking parlour.
Milking
He was milking 138 cows up to 2023 but cut back by 10 in 2024 as he felt he was chasing his tail too much. The farm grew 15t DM/ha last year, but this was back to an expected 13.6t DM/ha in 2024.
The Sweetman herd is high-yielding with the spring-calving cows typically delivering over 550kg MS/cow from a little over 1t of meal per cow, although Arthur says he expects the cows to deliver about 510kg MS/cow in 2024 from between 1.1t and 1.2t of meal per cow plus about 50kg of palm kernel fed per head.
Clover is a big part of the farm and this is something Arthur is working hard on.
At present, about one-third of the farm has good clover content, one-third has some clover and the remaining third has no clover.
He’s using a combination of full reseeding and oversowing to get clover established.
Some multispecies have been sown in the last few years but Arthur has since moved away from it and back to full grass and clover reseeds, feeling that the land is too open with multispecies.
A good man to get cows out to grass in spring, he missed just five days’ grazing in spring 2024 because of the weather.
When asked what the drivers of profit are on the farm, he says grass growth, cow performance and cost control.
In short
There are eight finalists in the Sustainable Grassland Farmer of the Year competition for 2024 between different categories. Each farmer will be featured over the coming weeks including five dairy farmers and three beef farmers. Shane Hegarty is farming near Leighlinbridge in Co Carlow and milking 220 cows.Arthur Sweetman is farming near Carrig-on-Bannow in Co Wexford and milking 127 cows. 
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