DairyBeef 500 Farm Walk – Charlie and Charles Smyth
Type Booklet
By DairyBeef 500 team
Download Publication (PDF)
A DairyBeef 500 Farm Walk took place on Thursday, 10th July on the farm of Charlie and Charles Smyth, Virginia, Co. Cavan.
Since Charlie joined the Dairybeef 500 campaign he has demonstrated his open mindedness and ambition to improve profitability and performance on his farm. By focusing on calf rearing, grassland management and silage quality to reduce inputs and age of slaughter a steady improvement has been made.
Charlie recently begun to use some higher quality beef sires, identified from the Commercial Beef Value (CBV), a tool which will bring more confidence to beef farmers that they can source calves that are of superior genetic merit in terms of carcass weight and conformation than the average dairy beef calf.
The event booklet covers the following topics:
- Farm Overview
- Farm Physical and Financial Performance
- Farm Performance
- Summer Parasite Control in Calves at Grass for Dairy Calf-to-Beef Systems
- Ensuring the Successful Transition to Grass
- Selection of calves based on genetic potential
- Drafting animals for finish
- Grassland Infrastructure
- Grassland Management
- Agricultural sustainability support and advisory programme (ASSAP)
- The Signpost Programme: meeting our greenhouse gas emissions targets to 2030+ on beef farms
- How to reduce farm inorganic fertiliser application rate?
Find out more about the DairyBeef 500 programme here
The DairyBeef 500 programme is sponsored by Munster Bovine, Volac milk replacer Ireland, Corteva Agriscience, MSD, Liffey Mills and Drummonds.