Michael McGuigan
Newford - Farm Upate | Ruairi Cummins - Farm Update | Top Tips for August
Farmer Profile: Michael McGuigan
Michael McGuigan farms 23.5ha in Co. Meath.
Michael farms with his wife Aisling and daughter Penny at Blackwater Farm, Clongiffen, Longwood, Co. Meath. He farms part-time and manages his own investment company off-farm.
Michael farms 23.5ha all around the farmyard. The farm is a mixture of sandy gravel and clay soil. Over the last number of years Michael has concentrated on improving the soil fertility and improving the drainage on the farm. The farm is stocked at 1.9LU/ha, with plans to go to 2.1LU/ha. He was stocked at 140kg N/ha in 2020.
Michael runs a suckling to weanling system consisting of all autumn calvers. The males are sold as weanlings while the heifers, if not retained for breeding, are sold for export or sold in show and sales in the local mart. He is using 100% AI to allow him to use the best genetics available.
The farm has been extremely well paddocked in the last couple of years, with 25 main divisions and the ability to split fields with temporary fencing. Having plenty of well-placed water troughs is key to allowing paddocks to be split. Calves creep graze ahead of the cows from a few weeks of age. Michael is measuring grass presently.
All farm buildings are relatively new. Michael has excellent handling facilities and plenty of slurry storage. He has plans in the future to build another slatted shed and maybe a loose dry bed shed with a dung pit.
His Teagasc advisor is David Argue. Click ‘Read more’ for further information about Michael's farm.
Farm Update - Michael Mcuigan wins two awards
Michael accepted his awards at the Grassland Farmer of the Year awards at Teagasc Moorepark.
Michael took home two awards at the Grassland Farmer of the Year awards hosted at Teagasc, Moorepark on May 24.
He won the overall Drystock Grassland Farmer of the Year 2022 and also picked up an award for the best innovation in grassland. Michael is only farming six years and has invested his energy and capital into growing and utilising grass to its maximum in that short period of time. Why would he want to and how can it be done? Many farmers across the country would be asking these questions, and as a result a large crowd attended a farm walk on his farm in Blackwater, just outside Longwood, on a damp July evening recently.
Interestingly, one of the first questions asked on the evening was “Why”. Michael responded: “After taking on the farm, I went to a lot of farm walks and events and I quickly learned that if there was any profit to be made out of farming – grass would have to be front and centre”.
When Michael bought the 60 acres, it was originally a stud farm in three fields. Soil samples were taken and confirmed what he suspected – the soil fertility was very low in terms of pH, phosphorus (P) and potassium (K). The first step was addressing that issue. Fertilisers with higher levels of P and K, like 18.6.12, were used instead of those containing higher levels of nitrogen (N). Lime was also applied. There were parts of the farm that were so poor Michael adopted a reseeding programme over five years.
Another key to his success was joining a local grass group facilitated by Grass10 and David Argue of Teagasc. Michael learned from other farmers in the group that to control grass putting in a paddock system was one of the first steps. He began dividing up the 60 acres. He put in additional water troughs and divided the farm with seven permanent divisions using timber stakes and two strands of electric wire. These can be divided further with reels and pigtails. The number of divisions has gone from the original three to 25, meaning a paddock size of 2.2 acres (0.90ha).
Another vital tool to control grass is walking the whole farm on a weekly basis from February to November. Michael is measuring grass and using PastureBase software to help him make the correct management decisions.
When asked at the farm walk about the time it takes to walk the farm every week in order to manage grass and move stock every two days he replied: “Moving stock takes only five minutes and the time walking the farm every week is the most important hour of my farming week”.
In summary, the farm grew over 11t DM/ha of grass in 2022, almost twice that grown on the average drystock farm.
Meanwhile in August, the priority is weaning the calves and giving them the best grass on the farm. Michael started using nose pads last year and found them great. Calves have also been dung sampled and weighed. The cows will be restricted to low covers of grass post weaning. Michael wants them fit not fat prior to calving in October. Forage rape will also be sown.
Read more here, and also watch a video from Michael.
Farm Update - Newford
Stephen Frend of Newford Farm has a busy month ahead of him.
With the busy breeding season concluding on July 4, the focus for Stephen Frend on the Newford Farm for the months of July and August is as follows:
▶ keeping good quality pasture ahead of the stock to drive animal performance;
▶ weighing all weanlings and stores to track performance;
▶ taking faecal samples to identify any issues with worms;
▶ castrating male weanlings in the first week of August;
▶ giving all weanlings their final shot against respiratory diseases on August 1; and,
▶ forward creep grazing of the weanlings and introducing meal from mid August.
On a finishing farm like Newford, one of key components to the target of reducing slaughter age is to ensure that the weanlings are achieving excellent weight gains of over 1.2-1.3kg per day over the first summer. Stressful events like weaning, castration and housing can reduce liveweight gain. In recent years, Newford has been castrating their males earlier compared to most beef farms. Stephen plans to castrate the males on August 1. Newford have found castrating at this time (a month before weaning) to be relatively stress-free for the calf.
Faecal samples have highlighted a lung worm problem, so action needs to be taken. Grass remains tight on Newford, so Stephen plans to apply 18 units of protected urea/acre. Second-cut silage will be made as soon as weather improves, so that this ground will be back in the rotation, which will help build grass for the autumn. Drafting of stock suitable for slaughter off grass will also be a priority for August. There is plenty of action down in Newford, click here to find out more.
Farm Update - Ruairi Cummins
Ruairi Cummins with daughter Laura.
As we move into autumn, Ruairi is making plans for building grass on his farm.
He will spread his last round of fertiliser this month; a half bag of protected urea per acre on the home farm, and 1-1.5 bags of 18-6-12 per acre on the out farm, to help build the soil indexes. Farmyard manure will be spread on second-cut silage ground. Fortunately, Ruairi took advantage of a small dry spell in July to get second-cut silage made and this ground will now be back in the grazing rotation for August.
The cows will be scanned this month and the bull calves will be separated from the heifer calves. Any empty cows will go to the out farm for finishing at grass, so that they won’t have to be housed for the winter. The calves are creep grazing ahead of the cows and will be fed barley at grass before and after weaning, which will help to reduce demand. Ten store bullocks were sold in July, which has also reduced demand at grass.
While Ruairi is happy that there is plenty of grass on the farm (on target at 17 days ahead), he finds that the herd is going through it very quickly due to the low dry matter. He plans to have over 25 days ahead by September to combat slower growth rates.
Read more about Ruairi's farm here.