
Caroline Walsh Virtual Farm Walk
Type Event Proceeding
On April 21st, Caroline Walsh, overall and dairy category winner of the 2020 Grassland Farmer of the Year Competition hosted a virtual event from her farm through the medium of video, social media and live webinar
On Wednesday, 21 April, Caroline Walsh, overall & dairy category winner of the 2020 Grassland Farmer of the Year Competition took us through a day in the life on her dairy farm in Ballinascarthy, County Cork through the use of video, social media and a live webinar that evening with guest host, Aidan Brennan, Irish Farmers Journal and Caroline's Teagasc Advisor, Mark Treacy.
You can watch back the footage below and gain an insight into how Caroline operates her farm to a high level of technical performance and grazing efficiency in a sustainable manner.
Watch back the webinar below
Meet Caroline Walsh
In this first short clip, Caroline runs through an overview of her family farm
Grassland Management on Carolines farm
Caroline has invested heavily in grazing infrastructure so she can get cows out from early February to mid-November. She walks her farm once a week and more regularly from February onwards depending on growth.
Reseeding
Caroline gives an overview of how she decides to reseed paddocks on the farm using PastureBase Ireland and outlines the reseeding process. The reseeding plan is spray off, disc, set, roll, use of 2 bags of 18-6-12, lime if needed and a grass seed mix with clover.
Breeding
The average herd EBI on Carolines farm is just over 180. The heifer calves which will retained for 2 years time is just over 250. Caroline uses 100% AI as she doesn't feel comfortable having stock bulls especially with having 5 children on farm. Caroline uses the smaXtec bolus system which alerts her to animals going into heat or being sick. In the first 3 weeks, they generally AI once a day. Hear more from Caroline here.
Improving Sustainability in West Cork
In this clip, Mark Treacy, Teagasc advisor to Caroline Walsh, 2020 Grassland Farmer of the Year talks about how he has seen Caroline's system evolve from a high input system to a much more sustainable grass based system. Caroline's farm showcases great examples of how farms are adopting sustainable technologies.
Sustainability
Caroline talks about the steps she is taking to play her part in the journey to more sustainable farming such as replacing 1/5 of chemical nitrogen with slurry spread by LESS. Hear more about what she is doing in this clip.
Soil Fertility
Every December, Caroline soil samples on her farm from which they correct the pH and the P&K imbalances on the farm.