Sheep Farmer of the Year talks to Catherine Hurley about his drive for efficient farming
SHEEP Farmer of the Year John Bell sold the home farm when his mother retired and moved to Castletowngeoghegan in Westmeath 28 years ago, because his wife Marese was working in Mullingar.
“I didn’t walk into the farm. Initially when I bought this farm and sold the home farm, there was a lot of investment needed on top of the initial cost of buying it,” he says.
“It was a bit of pressure financially, but it does make you think about how better to make money and how to be more efficient.”
Today, John farms 600 breeding ewes, mainly Belclare cross, Texel cross and Suffolk on a 120-acre farm 20 minutes southwest of Mullingar.
Some 90 acres are owned, while a further 30 acres are rented, all in one block.
The Bells’ farm is a mixture of high, dry ground and moury/ peaty (heavy) ground, and the grazing platform is divided into roughly 60 divisions to make ease of the rotational grazing system.
John has divided his flock into a number of groups, and one of the daily jobs is to move three-strand wire each day, with the help of a quad, to ensure each group has fresh grass.
One of the main issues on the farm is the lack of seasonal labour, especially around lambing. His advice, for any farmer, is to think about using labour-saving devices wherever possible.
Organised
As well as employing contractors to make both bales and pit silage, John also farms out all shearing and dosing, which is all done in the one day. He says that as long as everything is well organised in advance, the whole day should run smoothly.
“In my opinion, it’s the way to go if farmers can at all — it’s more efficient with your time,” he says. “It’s all done in one day, no messing about, and everyone’s finished by 6.30 that evening.”
Lambing starts on the farm around St Patrick’s weekend, not any earlier because of labour shortages.
“We’re finding it harder every year to get staff — and experienced staff,” says John. “This land does not lend itself to early lambing; we try to lamb along with the grass growth.
“It’s getting that little bit harder every year to find staff. It’s the nature of sheep farming, it’s seasonal work and sheep farmers often can’t afford fulltime staff all-year round.
“We get enough drudgery as farmers without drawing more on it. It’s a lot easier to go with the nature of the land and with the weather than to go against it. We get a long winter here and a lot of cold weather, and realistically we can’t let sheep out until mid-March.”
John has an artificial rearing machine to feed the 120 foster lambs that come with spring time on the farm, most of which are triplets.
“A lot of time goes into these foster lambs and it can be expensive to rear them, but with a good price, we often see €3040 profit per lamb and that’s good enough for me to make it worthwhile,” he says.
“Farming is a great way of living, there is a living to be made out of sheep farming. The way I’m running it, I can afford to work here full-time with the scale that I have.”
But he says it’s vital to love what you’re doing: “It’s not always about the money but at the end of the day it is a business.”
IT’S ALL DONE IN ONE DAY AND THERE’S NO MESSING ABOUT
Farming Independent Farming Independent