Maurice Hearne

Location:  Dunmore East Co. Waterford

Farm size: 80 Ha

System: Suckling to bull finish

Details:

Maurice works full time on the farm. He farms 75 Ha of grassland 50% of which is leased.  The farm is extremely fragmented into 6 separate blocks with a mix of both heavy and dry soil.  Soil fertility is mixed with some very good and some poor. Infrastructure is quiet good with some work required on reducing the size of divisions and providing water access.

Herd health is an issue on farm especially pneumonia and work has already taken place in a number of sheds to improve ventilation

Maurice has a 85 cow Autumn calving herd and Bulls are slaughtered at 16-20 months, while heifers at 22 months of grass. The aim is to increase the cow herd to 120 and with improvements in efficiency slaughter all bulls at 16 months and heifers at 2 year olds. To further increase output Maurice plans to purchase forty bulls and finish them with his own U-16 Months.

Mandatory Challenges

• Two tonne grass challenge – All farms to aim to increase by 2 Tonne/DM/ha
• Farm finance challenge – Gross margin target €1250/ha on average
• Farm safety challenge – Farms to introduce 2 positive changes annually

Optional Challenges

• Breeding challenge – Increase average replacement value of herd by €20 over course of programme and meet all herd fertility targets
• Herd health challenge – Aim to reduce antibiotic input by 20% and develop herd health plan
• Soil fertility challenge -Aim for 70% of farm at index 3 P&K. Ph – aim for 6.1 (5.7 on peat soils)
• Mixed grazing challenge -Establish blueprint for successful mixed grazing on farms

Read more on the challenges

Updates

Open Day Booklets

• BETTER farm walk – Hearne – Spring 2019

IFJ articles

Teagasc Newsletters

• January 2018