Innovative Tuam firm has something to crow about
A STORY about a ravaging jackdaw became the inspiration behind the invention of an award-winning simple aid which is likely to find a place on thousands of livestock farms around the country.
The 2018 National Dairy Show Innovation Engineering award has been presented to Cormac Tagging of Tuam, Co Galway for the ‘Tissue Sample Wristband’ which has been invented by the company.
The awards were open to new products or services which have been launched within the past 12 months targeted to revolutionise some aspect of dairy farming.
The Tissue Sample Wristband is a simple wristband designed to conveniently hold 12 samples from the tagging pliers for inserting the official identification tags in calves.
Company founder TJ Gormley explained that the concept is to prevent loss of the tissue samples when the farmer is applying the statutory required ID tags to calves during the normal busy calving season on dairy farms.
“The band will safely hold up to 12 samples and prevent accidental loss while tagging a number of calves,” he said.
“I came up with the idea after hearing about the problem for a farmer after some of the tissue samples were picked up by a jackdaw while other calves were being tagged. The jackdaw may have mistakenly thought that the tissue sample was a worm of some kind,” he said.
So he thought that there should be a better way to avoid such a problem and convenient- ly aid farmers to keep samples safe during the process.
The band which conveniently fits on the wrist, has a range of 12 slots, each of which is designed to safely retain one tissue sample until it is removed for despatch to the laboratory. It is being retailed online at €7.95.
The founder of Cormac Sheep Equipment and Tuam Farm Supplies, TJ Gormley is no stranger to the world of inventions having left his mark in the sector over the past three decades or so and is presently one of the approved suppliers of calf and sheep tags.
In 2016 he became the first recipient of the ‘Farmers Oscar’ from the National Hall of Fame Award in recognition of his contribution to the provision of facilities and services to farming over his lifetime.
TJ grew up on a sheep farm near Tuam and studied at Warrenstown Agricultural College. He says that his “love of sheep was always to the fore”, so much so that he played a leading role in the introduction of the Beltex breed to Ireland more than two decades ago.
For almost 30 years, with his wife Kitty he has been involved in developing and supplying sheep handling equipment to farmers all over the country, winning RDS awards on ten occasions for his innovations to ease the task of handling sheep on farms.
In 2001 he launched Cormac Tagging Ltd which now holds 30pc share of the total market for tags for sheep, goats and pigs. Two years ago the company received approval from the Department of Agriculture as an official supplier of calf tags.