The west of Ireland is the heartland of suckler breeding, from Carndonagh in Donegal through to Skibbereen in Cork. But even along this belt of land along the Wild Atlantic Way, west Clare is in itself a niche in the suckler industry, known for producing some of the country’s finest weanlings on what is often marginal ground, fit for few other agricultural purposes.
John Ryan is one of these farmers, operating a heavy-natured block of just shy of 38.13ha in the hinterland of Kilrush town.
John’s is a typical suckler farm. He runs 20 spring-calving cows with bull weanlings sold in the autumn and all heifers retained for breeding or selling as stores or in-calf heifers.
John was the host of one of Teagasc’s suckler breeding walks recently, where he gave details on how he operates his suckler system in rural Co Clare.
Cow type and €uro-Stars
John has based the herd off a Simmental dam put back to a Limousin bull to produce what to him is a “beefy cow, while still retaining milk”.
Farming on a heavy soil, early turnout is not an option for him, so he highlights milk as the key driver of weight gain in the spring-born calves.
Hence, John highlighted milk as his number one trait in his replacements.
This focus on maternal traits has aided in driving his €uro-Star ratings, placing the herd average at €120, with the national average running at €88.
However, local Teagasc adviser Niall Lynch pointed to the fact that the breakdown of the replacement index, split between carcase weight, daughter milk and daughter calving interval, was very balanced in John’s herd, with no trait having to carry another.
Niall Lynch, Teagasc Kilrush, talks about some of the AI sires and breeding strategy used on the farm. To the left is an FSX-sired heifer calf alongside her OKH dam. \ Eamon Ward
Carcase weight rating of the herd stands at +20kg, with daughter milk at +6.8kg and daughter calving interval at -1.28 days.
Calving interval and herd fertility
For a herd using 100% AI and not being able to turn cows out early, John’s fertility is enviable, as is seen in Table 1.
His six-week calving rate stands at 83%, with the national average at 55%.
His calving interval is an impressive 361 days, 32 days less than the national average. Both of these factors are feeding in to his cow/calf/year figure running at 1.01, despite the national average being 0.87.
In monetary terms, this is the equivalent of him having two extra calves over an average suckler farmer running 20 cows who is not achieving the fertility levels that John’s herd is.
Niall highlighted how John averaged €1,350 for bull weanlings last autumn.
If his figures were that of an average farmer, he would have left €2,700 behind him due to reduced fertility alone.
Central to the calving herd’s high fertility is to have adequate replacements on board. All heifers are retained for the first winter.
John selects the top end of the heifers for his own replacements from an average of 10 heifers, with the remainder sold as stores or in-calf heifers. There is high demand for these due to the reputation of his stock.
“Last year, I had to cull six cows for various reasons; that’s only in a small herd. You need to have a replacement strategy in place to ensure you have enough heifers coming on board. You are really guessing when you are buying at the mart.
“I’ve done it in the past, everybody has done it and it’s really a lottery. You need to breed your own replacements from your top-end cows,’’ John says.
He is also pro-active regarding heat recording and pre-breeding checks.
Cows that have calved for a number of weeks and have not shown any heats are pre-scanned and treated accordingly.
This year so far, a cow was found to have a cyst on her ovary which was removed. “She wasn’t going to go in-calf unless action was taken,’’ John says. Maiden heifers that show no heats are also scanned and treated accordingly.
Despite having in his own admission, a “small” herd of 20 cows, John used 10 different AI sires in last year’s breeding season, seen in Table 2.
John Ryan and Eoin Frawley, ICBF, echoed each other’s thoughts that using a large team of bulls, even across a small herd, helps to lessen the risk when it comes to calf quality, calving difficulty and the star rating of bulls, an all too important fact for those participating in the new SCEP scheme.
Under the scheme requirements, 80% of calves born in 2023 and 2024 must be sired by a four- or five-star bull, either a stock bull or AI sire, with this figure rising to 85% for 2025 and 2026 and 90% for 2027, although a derogation is in place for 2023 due to cows being put in calf before the scheme requirements were known.
Eoin advised farmers in attendance to use a team of AI bulls.
“The star rating of bulls goes up and down, with updates to ratings every two months.
“This is due to all the information we are receiving on bulls; from factories, farmers completing calving surveys, mart data.
“The same can be said for your stock bull. If you purchase a four- or five-star bull with the intention of using him to breed replacements, his star rating could fall to a three-star and the females off him might not be eligible to meet your SCEP requirements.’’
Eoin described using a stock bull as “putting all your eggs in one basket’’ with regard to SCEP requirements.
A sire that has worked well for John in the past is the renowned Fiston (FSZ), with John now moving on to using his son Cloonradoon Ricky (CH 7503).
Moondharrig Knell (LM4217) was another sire with which John has had good success in breeding replacements.
Michael Dillon and Aoife Forde, Teagasc, highlighted some of the key targets to be met under the new SCEP scheme to the large crowd in attendance. \ Eamon Ward
When asked about calving difficulty, he says: “To me it’s about balancing calving ease with quality. I don’t want extremely hard-calving bulls, but you need some degree of power there to hit the weight gain in calves.
“We have sections on this farm, but we try to limit them. I don’t have a cut-off for calving difficulty; I try to match the bull to the cow’s calving ability.’’
Even breeding 50% of his herd to more maternal than terminal genetics, John’s calves display exceptional growth rates.
Part of this is due to creep feeding, although both John and Niall agreed that this was complementing the milk coming from the dams rather than substituting for a lack of it, as is often the case where calves are fed meal.
Bull calves on the farm had an average daily gain of 1.7kg/day, with heifers at 1.45kg/day. John’s 200-day weight for bulls and heifers stood at 386kg and 334kg, respectively, with a national target of 300kg and 250kg.
Strong demand
John sees strong demand for these heavy bull weanlings from specialised bull finishers and exporters, with heifers on target to be bred the following spring and calved down at between 22 and 26 months of age.
The west of Ireland is the heartland of suckler breeding, from Carndonagh in Donegal through to Skibbereen in Cork. But even along this belt of land along the Wild Atlantic Way, west Clare is in itself a niche in the suckler industry, known for producing some of the country’s finest weanlings on what is often marginal ground, fit for few other agricultural purposes.
John Ryan is one of these farmers, operating a heavy-natured block of just shy of 38.13ha in the hinterland of Kilrush town.
John’s is a typical suckler farm. He runs 20 spring-calving cows with bull weanlings sold in the autumn and all heifers retained for breeding or selling as stores or in-calf heifers.
John was the host of one of Teagasc’s suckler breeding walks recently, where he gave details on how he operates his suckler system in rural Co Clare.
Cow type and €uro-Stars
John has based the herd off a Simmental dam put back to a Limousin bull to produce what to him is a “beefy cow, while still retaining milk”.
Farming on a heavy soil, early turnout is not an option for him, so he highlights milk as the key driver of weight gain in the spring-born calves.
Hence, John highlighted milk as his number one trait in his replacements.
This focus on maternal traits has aided in driving his €uro-Star ratings, placing the herd average at €120, with the national average running at €88.
However, local Teagasc adviser Niall Lynch pointed to the fact that the breakdown of the replacement index, split between carcase weight, daughter milk and daughter calving interval, was very balanced in John’s herd, with no trait having to carry another.
Niall Lynch, Teagasc Kilrush, talks about some of the AI sires and breeding strategy used on the farm. To the left is an FSX-sired heifer calf alongside her OKH dam. \ Eamon Ward
Carcase weight rating of the herd stands at +20kg, with daughter milk at +6.8kg and daughter calving interval at -1.28 days.
Calving interval and herd fertility
For a herd using 100% AI and not being able to turn cows out early, John’s fertility is enviable, as is seen in Table 1.
His six-week calving rate stands at 83%, with the national average at 55%.
His calving interval is an impressive 361 days, 32 days less than the national average. Both of these factors are feeding in to his cow/calf/year figure running at 1.01, despite the national average being 0.87.
In monetary terms, this is the equivalent of him having two extra calves over an average suckler farmer running 20 cows who is not achieving the fertility levels that John’s herd is.
Niall highlighted how John averaged €1,350 for bull weanlings last autumn.
If his figures were that of an average farmer, he would have left €2,700 behind him due to reduced fertility alone.
Central to the calving herd’s high fertility is to have adequate replacements on board. All heifers are retained for the first winter.
John selects the top end of the heifers for his own replacements from an average of 10 heifers, with the remainder sold as stores or in-calf heifers. There is high demand for these due to the reputation of his stock.
“Last year, I had to cull six cows for various reasons; that’s only in a small herd. You need to have a replacement strategy in place to ensure you have enough heifers coming on board. You are really guessing when you are buying at the mart.
“I’ve done it in the past, everybody has done it and it’s really a lottery. You need to breed your own replacements from your top-end cows,’’ John says.
He is also pro-active regarding heat recording and pre-breeding checks.
Cows that have calved for a number of weeks and have not shown any heats are pre-scanned and treated accordingly.
This year so far, a cow was found to have a cyst on her ovary which was removed. “She wasn’t going to go in-calf unless action was taken,’’ John says. Maiden heifers that show no heats are also scanned and treated accordingly.
Despite having in his own admission, a “small” herd of 20 cows, John used 10 different AI sires in last year’s breeding season, seen in Table 2.
John Ryan and Eoin Frawley, ICBF, echoed each other’s thoughts that using a large team of bulls, even across a small herd, helps to lessen the risk when it comes to calf quality, calving difficulty and the star rating of bulls, an all too important fact for those participating in the new SCEP scheme.
Under the scheme requirements, 80% of calves born in 2023 and 2024 must be sired by a four- or five-star bull, either a stock bull or AI sire, with this figure rising to 85% for 2025 and 2026 and 90% for 2027, although a derogation is in place for 2023 due to cows being put in calf before the scheme requirements were known.
Eoin advised farmers in attendance to use a team of AI bulls.
“The star rating of bulls goes up and down, with updates to ratings every two months.
“This is due to all the information we are receiving on bulls; from factories, farmers completing calving surveys, mart data.
“The same can be said for your stock bull. If you purchase a four- or five-star bull with the intention of using him to breed replacements, his star rating could fall to a three-star and the females off him might not be eligible to meet your SCEP requirements.’’
Eoin described using a stock bull as “putting all your eggs in one basket’’ with regard to SCEP requirements.
A sire that has worked well for John in the past is the renowned Fiston (FSZ), with John now moving on to using his son Cloonradoon Ricky (CH 7503).
Moondharrig Knell (LM4217) was another sire with which John has had good success in breeding replacements.
Michael Dillon and Aoife Forde, Teagasc, highlighted some of the key targets to be met under the new SCEP scheme to the large crowd in attendance. \ Eamon Ward
When asked about calving difficulty, he says: “To me it’s about balancing calving ease with quality. I don’t want extremely hard-calving bulls, but you need some degree of power there to hit the weight gain in calves.
“We have sections on this farm, but we try to limit them. I don’t have a cut-off for calving difficulty; I try to match the bull to the cow’s calving ability.’’
Even breeding 50% of his herd to more maternal than terminal genetics, John’s calves display exceptional growth rates.
Part of this is due to creep feeding, although both John and Niall agreed that this was complementing the milk coming from the dams rather than substituting for a lack of it, as is often the case where calves are fed meal.
Bull calves on the farm had an average daily gain of 1.7kg/day, with heifers at 1.45kg/day. John’s 200-day weight for bulls and heifers stood at 386kg and 334kg, respectively, with a national target of 300kg and 250kg.
Strong demand
John sees strong demand for these heavy bull weanlings from specialised bull finishers and exporters, with heifers on target to be bred the following spring and calved down at between 22 and 26 months of age.
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