RDS Spring Award for Kells sheep farmer

A Kilkenny farmer is among the winners of the 2023 RDS Spring Awards.

RDS celebrate innovative Irish farmers, foresters and agri-entrepreneurs. Awards highlight climate-smart agriculture in practice.

Kells farmer William Hutchinson has been named as the winner of the LambPlus Breeders Index Award for his Chapelizod Suffolk Flock, which is soon to celebrate its 30th anniversary.

William has been performance recording with LambPlus since the programme began in 2009 and lambed down 57 purebred Suffolk ewes in 2022.

In addition to William’s Suffolk flock, he also runs a flock of 52 breeding Texel ewes, 57 breeding Ile de France ewes and a flock of Easy Cares ewes which all lamb outdoors and are tagged at birth.

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William actively participates in performance recording with LambPlus, maintaining a high Data Quality Index of 77%. He pays attention to avoiding inbreeding and focuses on selecting Suffolk breeding rams with high growth rates and maternal traits.
William genotypes all breeding rams, hogget rams, and some breeding females, improving the accuracies of his breeding indexes.

The Chapelizod Suffolk flock has produced many top-quality rams and is known for their exceptional performance in Replacement and Terminal indexes.

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“Sustainable farming and agriculture has a very bright future in Ireland and I am delighted to see the efforts of all the award winners here today at the RDS Spring Agriculture and Forestry Awards,” said Minister Pippa Hackett, at the awards.

“As a proud organic farmer myself, I understand the hard work involved, but also the pride and satisfaction that goes with practising climate-smart farming and forestry. I want to congratulate all the award winners and indeed all those who participated.”

2023 RDS Dairy Herd Award

Mullinahone farmer, Jim White (pictured above), was the recipient of the 2023 RDS Dairy Herd Award.
Jim notes that breeding has had cumulative effect on the development of his Dairy Farm. Where they try to do everything possible to identify opportunities for improvement in their management system and gain an advantage by breeding the most efficient cows for their farm.

Jim is a great example to others of the benefits of continuous, incremental improvements, to drive efficiencies, reduce waste and increase profitability.