Farming on the shores of Lough Swilly, Derek and Gareth Peoples run a tight ship. The father son team made the decision a few years back to go down the route of dairy calf to beef. “It wasn’t an easy decision,” said Derek. “We just couldn’t make money out of buying top-quality cattle. It was getting harder and harder to source top cattle in the mart. Don’t get me wrong – the men that were selling these cattle needed the price they were getting – but we just couldn’t justify giving the high prices.

When a calf gets a good start in life, it’s half the battle

“It hasn’t been an easy transition to go from top-quality continental x steers to Friesians but we’ve made it and we are happy made the change. To be honest, there isn’t enough of a price differential at the factory end for those top-quality cattle.

The system

“We made a few enquiries locally and were able to source the majority of our calves from the same farm.”

Newtowncunningham is a long way from the south of the country and the Peoples didn’t like the idea of carting calves 300 miles from the south of Ireland and instead have built up a relationship with a local dairy farmer and buy most of his calves. “It’s worked out well with no health issues so far.”

They know the dairy farmer and they know that colostrum is fed to calves, which are kept very healthy on the farm. “When a calf gets a good start in life, it’s half the battle,” Derek said. Calves are reared in a straw shed on the farm and then grazed during the first summer at grass. Weanlings are housed and fed good-quality silage along with 2kg of ration during the winter months. Steers are then grazed for their second season at grass before being housed and slaughtered at 23 to 24 months at 320-330kg carcase weight. “We’ve looked at the option of increasing numbers and selling some as stores as housing would be the limiting factor on our farm but really when you buy a dairy x calf, it’s till death you do part,” said Derek.

A new shed is planned which will include slats and a straw lieback area which will mean the farm can go up to 120 calves split between autumn and spring. “We like the idea of having something to sell at two different times of the year and it will help cashflow as well to rear some in the autumn,” said Gareth.

Autumn calves would also mean they could utilise the calf-rearing shed twice per year as opposed to using it only once. “We may also look at trying some Aberdeen Angus or Hereford x steers but it’s harder to source these in Donegal”

Grazing

The Peoples put a huge emphasis on achieving liveweight gain from grass and graze Friesian steers in a paddock grazing system during the year. Steers are organised into groups of about 22 during the grazing season and spend about three days grazing each paddock. If paddocks get strong, they are taken out as round bale silage. This maintains quality in the grazing sward and it also means we are making top-quality silage from these strong paddocks. “We have to keep costs as low as possible in our system and we know the cheapest place we can have these animals is out grazing so that’s where we try to keep them. We have a relatively dry farm which means that we can get weanlings out in February most years and house generally at the end of November,” said Derek. Finishing cattle are housed earlier and started on concentrate feed in the shed. “Steers are built up to 8kg of concentrates (4kg of our own barley and 4kg of a barley balancer). We try and make good-quality silage and this year’s silage was cut on 25 May and came in at 76DMD and 13.9% protein.”

Slaughter performance

In 2017, Freisian steers averaged 308kg carcase at 25 months of age. The average grade was an O-3=. All animals are slaughtered in the Foyle Meats plant in Carrigans, Co Donegal, which is just a few miles from Newtowncunningham. “We would need to be getting €0.15/kg more to cover haulage to go to any other factory. We have a good relationship with our procurement manager and try to work with them in terms of letting them know when we are selling.” The Peoples farm are performing extremely well in terms of carbon emissions from their system. The average carbon emissions are 9.21 kg/CO2/kg of beef while the Peoples’ system is coming in at 6.8 kgCO2/kg beef.