Oliver O'Hara

Farmer Profile | Farm Update

Cathal Irwin - Farm Update | Eamon & Donnchadh McCarthy - Farm Update | Top Tips for November | November Deadlines

November Scheme Deadlines

1^st November –

• Final Day for submitting IBR bloods to accredited labs
• Last day to record weights for SCEP – Mother and Calf pair
• Last day to record weights for National Beef Welfare Scheme

20^th November

• ALL ATV/Quads operators – must have undergone an approved training course and must wear protective equipment including a helmet

24^th November

• SCEP - For the 2023 scheme year only, participants in SCEP who have not met the requirement of 50% of their yearly reference number of eligible females that are genotyped 4- or 5-stars on October 31^st 2023, will be reassessed on November 24, 2023 to determine if they have met the requirement of at least 50% eligible females in their herd on that date – special conditions apply

30^th November

• All genomic samples for SCEP must be returned

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Farm Profile - Oliver O'Hara

Oliver farms full-time with help from his children Shane and Karen in Gortnaskeagh, Leckaun, Co. Leitrim. He also runs a contracting business. He is farming 43ha of owned and leased land plus mountain commonage. His soil type is typically heavy clay, with some peaty areas adjacent to the mountain.

Oliver mainly runs a spring-calving system with 27 sucklers, a few of which are pedigree Limousin. Stronger males are finished as young bulls with the remainder sold as weanlings. AI is used for the first round to breed replacements and then a high-value dual-purpose Limousin bull is used for the rest of the breeding season. To complement the cattle system, Oliver has grown the sheep flock to 130 ewes, which lamb in March. Click ‘Read more’ for further information. 

Click on the video below to see how the O’Haras clip cattle for winter housing.

 Farm Update - Oliver O'Hara

Oliver is farming just outside Manorhamilton in Co. Leitrim.

In Oliver’s area, the winter can be typically six months for a suckler herd. As a result, he has invested in winter housing with adequate slurry storage. Last year, he completed the construction of a new sheep shed. It will accommodate all of the flock during the main winter months. He can rest his grassland and build covers for the spring lambing flock, while the ewes will now be lambed indoors in a comfortable environment for Oliver and family.

Performance of all progeny over the winter is vital in any efficient, profitable farming system. Oliver pays attention to all aspects which affect daily liveweight gains over the expensive winter period namely:

• providing adequate lying and feeding space;
• feeding top quality silage; and,
• ensuring good animal health practices, such as dosing/clipping/vaccinations.

Read more here.

 Farm Update - Cathal Irwin

Cathal Irwin has recently changed his calving period.

Cathal farms at Mountgordon, Westport Road, Castlebar, Co. Mayo. He is farming 27.7ha, which is fragmented. There are heavy clay/peaty type soils on the farm, which are typical of the area.

Cathal has recently changed his calving period from October-December to January-February. The plan now is to keep the system simple, calving early and finishing all the males as under-16 month old bulls the following April and May. Cathal says: “I intend to breed my own replacements with sexed semen and sell the remaining heifers as forward stores”.

Cows and calves grazing on Cathal’s farm.

At the beginning of October, Cathal housed the bull weanlings and was very close to housing more stock due to poor ground conditions. However, with the improvement in weather, and plenty of grass, he managed to keep cows and heifer weanlings out to graze off grass. Come November 1 all stock will be housed.

The attention now comes to pushing animal performance over the winter. The herd’s main diet will be silage plus meal for the bull weanlings. The focus for Cathal has been to make top-quality silage for the priority stock over the winter, i.e.:

• male weanling bulls to be finished in April and May 2024;
• weanling heifers for replacements and sale; and,
• cows post calving in January and February.

It is good practice to take silage samples to see how good or bad your silage is and what rate of meal feeding will be needed to achieve a good weight gain, e.g., 0.6kg/head/day, indoors. Cathal took his sample in October. What was the result? To find out click on ‘Read more’. 

 Farm Update - Eamon & Donnchadh McCarthy

Donnchadh (left) and Eamon McCarthy have a number of groups to dose.

The winter housing period provides a great opportunity to treat cattle for a good clear out of worms and fluke from their systems. Eamon and Donnchadh have a number of cattle groups to consider when dosing this winter – cows, finishing cattle, store cattle, and weanlings.

The autumn and spring cows will not be dosed, as it is expected that they will have built up immunity to worms over their lifetime. The autumn 2022 bulls were housed for finishing in August and dosed with an albendazole drench, which only has a 14-day withdrawal period. This treated them for stomach worms, lung worms, and adult liver fluke. A faecal egg count (FEC) sample showed the bulls were positive for both lung and stomach worms.

The finishing bulls were dosed at housing to avoid any setbacks in performance.

The weanlings and yearlings will be dosed with an ivermectin pour-on at housing to treat them for lung worms, stomach worms and lice. 
Eamon and Donnchadh have a dry farm, and liver and rumen fluke are not typically issues. They monitor the Animal Health Ireland (AHI) Beef HealthCheck reports for any incidence of fluke, especially this year when the summer was so wet. For example, the report from July 21 showed lung and liver scores of 1, indicating that they presented as normal (Table 1). The report from the latest group of slaughtered heifers is due and will be studied closely. 

FEC samples will be taken six and 12 weeks after housing to check for any liver fluke eggs, but also to ensure that the housing dose worked effectively against lung and stomach worms. If liver fluke eggs are present, a triclabendazole or Closantel drench/pour-on can be administered to kill the early immature (less than six weeks), immature (six to 10 weeks) and mature (>11 weeks) fluke. Fluke is a complicated parasite and you really need to look at threat level on your farm. To read more on the life cycle and treatment of liver fluke visit this link.

And to see more about the McCarthys’ operation, click ‘Read more’.