I’m managing: “Bernie and Frank Walsh’s farm since their son, and my best friend, Tomás, sadly passed away last July. Myself and Tomás met out hunting when we were very young. I would cycle over to the farm during the summer when we were younger. I worked on the farm during and after college too.”
College: “I studied a Level 8 business degree in WIT and promised my mother I’d give a job a go for a year. I was in recruitment and couldn’t hack it so Tomás asked me to come back and work with him – I was delighted and we got on like a house on fire.”
Setup: “We’re milking around 140 Jersey-cross cows on 200ac of land. Half of the land consists of the milking platform and the rest is broken up into two outfarms and the silage ground.”
Calving: “We’ve about 29 cows left to calve, we started on 3 February. It went great, we didn’t lose anything.”
Weather: “If the weather could change soon it’d be a huge relief. We’ve a wet enough farm, even the dry ground is wet now. We’ve been out with the cows for a few hours a day for the last two weeks but it’s challenging. We’ll have 30% grazed by St Patrick’s Day. They’re getting 4kg of meal and about 5kg of beet per day.”
Breeding: “We’ll start tail painting in April and see what’s cycling and needs to be examined. Breeding then will kick off in May and we’ll be using sexed semen to breed our replacements from our best cows and heifers. They’ll be synchronised with CIDRs. It’ll be all beef AI after that. We’ll run an Angus bull and Friesian bull for the last two or three weeks at the very most. Tomás was big into his AI, he loved it and worked for an AI company during the summer.”
Calves: “The beef calves are being sold from three weeks of age onward. They go to New Ross Mart. The first of them are due to go this week, the prices have been good so far so hopefully they’ll stay high.”
David Jordan and Tomás Walsh pictured by Rachel Donovan at the Moorepark open day, just three weeks before Tomás's death.
I’m managing: “Bernie and Frank Walsh’s farm since their son, and my best friend, Tomás, sadly passed away last July. Myself and Tomás met out hunting when we were very young. I would cycle over to the farm during the summer when we were younger. I worked on the farm during and after college too.”
College: “I studied a Level 8 business degree in WIT and promised my mother I’d give a job a go for a year. I was in recruitment and couldn’t hack it so Tomás asked me to come back and work with him – I was delighted and we got on like a house on fire.”
Setup: “We’re milking around 140 Jersey-cross cows on 200ac of land. Half of the land consists of the milking platform and the rest is broken up into two outfarms and the silage ground.”
Calving: “We’ve about 29 cows left to calve, we started on 3 February. It went great, we didn’t lose anything.”
Weather: “If the weather could change soon it’d be a huge relief. We’ve a wet enough farm, even the dry ground is wet now. We’ve been out with the cows for a few hours a day for the last two weeks but it’s challenging. We’ll have 30% grazed by St Patrick’s Day. They’re getting 4kg of meal and about 5kg of beet per day.”
Breeding: “We’ll start tail painting in April and see what’s cycling and needs to be examined. Breeding then will kick off in May and we’ll be using sexed semen to breed our replacements from our best cows and heifers. They’ll be synchronised with CIDRs. It’ll be all beef AI after that. We’ll run an Angus bull and Friesian bull for the last two or three weeks at the very most. Tomás was big into his AI, he loved it and worked for an AI company during the summer.”
Calves: “The beef calves are being sold from three weeks of age onward. They go to New Ross Mart. The first of them are due to go this week, the prices have been good so far so hopefully they’ll stay high.”
David Jordan and Tomás Walsh pictured by Rachel Donovan at the Moorepark open day, just three weeks before Tomás's death.
SHARING OPTIONS