Beef to the core
James Madigan’s commitment to better beef farming has yielded impressive results in efficiency and output, reports
James Madigan is a beef farmer to his core. The award-winning Kilkenny man is not remotely tempted by the lure of dairy lucre. He is well aware that he could make a lot of money in dairy, but beef is in his soul.
“If I got a tenner for every time someone asked me was I interested in going into dairy, I would never have to milk a cow to make money,” he jokes.
“If I was starting now and the quotas were gone, I would still go with the sucklers. Beef is my gear, that is what I know. It is not all about money at the end of the day and I am doing well out of what I have.”
He certainly is. Shortlisted in the 2019 Zurich Farm Insurance/ Farming Independent Farmer of the Year awards, James’ focus on efficiency enabled him to oversee a 25pc increase in the gross output on his 86-hectare farm between 2015 and 2019, from €121,842 to €152,874.
James, who was nominated in the Beef Farmer of the Year category last year, farms at Derrynahinch in the hurling stronghold of Ballyhale. Married to Anne Marie and father of three young children, he has a herd of 100 suckler cows.
Born and raised on a farm near his current holding, James worked with his father, Tommy, for a number of years before establishing his own enterprise 12 years ago. Since then he has reseeded land, built accommodation for 250 cattle and put in roadways.
He worked off-farm in a local meat factory up until 2016 but now works just one day off-farm a week as a livestock agent.
Autumn
James, named Kilkenny Young Farmer of the Year in 2010, calves 50 cows in autumn and 50 in spring.
“The autumn herd calves in nine weeks; breeding finishes on Christmas Eve and scanning takes place in February,” he says.
“The spring herd receives the bull at the start of March and is taken away during mid-June. If you are not in calf, you have no business around here.”
With a focus on functionality, milk and fertility, the main cow type on the farm is Limousin, Simmental and Charolais cross cows.
“The autumn herd is 50pc dairy to account for the milk needed from the mothers.
“Then the spring- calving herd is 25pc dairy to match the grass growth,” James explains.
He works to maximise animal live-weight gain from grazed grass to reduce production costs and maintains a tight calving pattern to keep his calving interval at 359 days (the national average is 401 days according to HerdPlus).
Replacements are home-bred and sourced from a local dairy farmer. The farm prides itself in the use of two top-quality Charolais stock bulls, and an Angus bull was introduced to the farm in 2018 as a maternal sire.
The Madigan farm showcases an efficient grass-based calf-to-beef production system. With 112 acres of grass to work with once a forestry area is discounted, James has the farm divided into paddocks, with electric wires surrounding each field.
“I do a 3-5 day paddock rotational system and I roughly have three acres in each paddock,” he says.
“Keeping production costs at a minimum is vital in any farming system and it is even more relevant when trying to make money from beef animals.
“Having your stocking rate matching the amount of grass that you can grow is the main priority farmers should focus on.
“Your breeding weights and your weaning weights need to be a key target also.”
With silage, James doesn’t cut the same grass every year.
“The first fine week in May, we are out doing our first cut and we do three cuts in total in some places
we go for six or seven bales per acre,” he says.
“We do the second cut of silage at the start of June usually.”
Reseeding at a rate of 10pc every year with AberGain and AberChoice, James believes that anything with Aber is rocket fuel.
“In the height of your growing season, you are turning around every 15 days. It is serious stuff to grow,” he says.
For James, keeping input costs at a minimum is crucial. The best of his bulls are finished at 14 months and weigh approximately 500kg coming off the cow.
Carcass weights
“Autumn-born bulls are getting 8kg of 14pc protein nut a day and first-cut silage of 76pc DMD is given ad lib. This knocks a euro a day off the feed bill per head. At 14 months, these will go to the factory. This year that is on April Fool’s day.
“Last year was very worrying, it was hard to get bulls killed. This year though, it is a situation of ring today and kill tomorrow.
“The bulls going to slaughter this April are putting on a kilo of carcass a day at least that’s €3.70 a day and your feed cost a day is about €2 or €2.20, so you still have a few quid for yourself.”
In 2019, young bulls left the farm with a carcass weight of 414kg, a grading of U=2= and reached a factory price of €1,535.
During the same period, heifers were coming in with a maximum carcass weight of 341kg and a grading of R+3=, and reached a factory price of €1,233.
“When an animal hits 500kg on this farm, their days are numbered, whether it’s a heifer or a bull,” James concludes.
‘The bulls going to slaughter this April are putting on a kilo of carcass a day at least — that’s €3.70 a day and your feed cost a day is about €2 or €2.20, so you still have a few quid for yourself ’