On Tuesday, 19 January, the Grassland Farmer of the Year Awards Ceremony took place as a live webinar. During this live webinar, the 15 finalists were profiled and winners of each category along with the overall winner were announced. Caroline Walsh from Ballinascarthy, Co. Cork was announced as the Overall Winner of the Grassland Farmer of the Year 2020.
See below for full profiles of each finalist.
Caroline farms in Ballinascarthy, Co. Cork milking about 70 cows on a 20 ha milking platform. She is reducing cow numbers slightly and will be stocked at 3.2 LU/ha this year. Caroline aims to make a similar profit level from the farm as less inputs are required. Read more about Caroline here…
David is a new entrant to farming as well as dairying in Castleisland, Co. Kerry. David started milking on a 32ha leased block in 2018 (an existing dairy operation), he aims to milk 80 cows this year. Read more about David here…
Sean Barry farms alongside his father Pat in Pallasgreen, Co. Limerick. The Barry’s milk 70 cows with stocking rate of 3.2 LU/ha on the milking platform. The milking platform is split in three with a busy main road and minor road. The farm is mostly heavy soil type and as such has required essential investments in grazing infrastructure, drainage and reseeding to get it to where it is today. Read more about Sean here…
John Galvin farms near Dunmanway, Co. Cork with his wife Yvonne, and they milk just over 100 cows on 35ha. A high rainfall area and nestled between mountain and bog John puts a big focus and effort on getting cows out early in February. Read more about John here…
Peter & Tom McGuinness are tillage and sheep farmers from Trim, Co. Meath. Over 800 ewes are lambed each year. Single and twin bearing ewes are wintered outdoors and triplets are housed. All ewes are lambed outdoors on grass with lambing starting in mid-March.
Read more about Peter here…
Pat farms alongside his father Matt in Castlemartyr, Co. Cork, running a dairy calf to beef enterprise as well as tillage on the farm. 180 calves were purchased in 2020. Calves are rotating every 24-36hrs during the first grazing season through a well laid out paddock system and central roadway.
Read more about Pat here…
Thomas runs a 60-cow suckler-to-store operation outside Nenagh in Co. Tipperary. The farm is split into two blocks with the cows and calves grazing on the 66 acre outblock during the main grazing season. Thomas carried 45 cows plus calves here in 2016 and his goal is to carry 68 in 2021 on the same area.
Read more about Thomas here…
JP runs a dairy calf to beef farm near Lattin, Co. Tipperary. His goal is to earn €20/hour for every hour he works on the farm, as he also works off-farm as an engineer. Naturally he is metrics focused and utilising high levels of high quality grass is essential to reach a high output for the farm and JP’s success.
Read more about JP here…
Noel now milks close to 200 cows in Kildorrery, Co. Cork but this wasn’t always the case. Originally from Kilbrittain in West Cork, Noel made the move to manage a farm in the early 1990s. Through hard work, leasing and land purchase he now owns his own farm. Read more about Noel here…
David milks 100 cows on his farm near Stradone, Co. Cavan on a heavy farm. The farm is stocked at 2.5 LU/ha and has made huge progress over the past number of years to grow and utilise more grass. David gravel-mole ploughs 5-10 acres of his farm each year transforming the wettest paddocks on the farm to some of the driest he has. Read more about David here…
Graham has been farm manager at Miletree Farm outside Clonmel since 2007. There are 510 cows milked on 144ha with silage and young stock on outblocks. The herd of mostly Jersey cross cows sold 470 Kg MS per cow (supplied to Glanbia) from 900 kg meal in 2019. Read more about Graham here…
Farming at 900ft – 1000ft above sea level near Piltown, Co. Kilkenny, Shane Kinsella milks 88 cows with a whole farm stocking rate of 2.9 LU/Ha. He has put great effort into his grazing infrastructure which is top class and helps labour efficiency allowing Shane to work off farm.
Read more about Shane here…
James is a new entrant to dairy farming and he and his father Jim are milking 380 cows along with tillage near Dunleer, Co. Louth. The farm is stocked at 3.6 LU/ha on the milking platform. He began milking cows in 2017 and all the milking platform was reseeded the autumn prior to this. Read more about James here…
Niall plans to milk 240 cows on his 72ha milking platform this year outside Craughwell, Co. Galway. His farm is mixed soil types and Niall’s focus is to run a labour efficient. Growing and utilising grass helps reduce this workload as well as outsourcing machinery work. Read more about Niall here…
John milks 200 cows on 72ha in Rathduff, Co. Cork. John is the farm manager on this leased farm since 2018 after returning home from New Zealand having spent five years of working on and managing a dairy farm there. Read more about John here…
