Kilkenny farmer takes on Future Beef Programme

Ruairí Cummins is one of the 24 farmers nationwide participating in the Future Beef Programme.

The aims of the programme are creating sustainable and profitable farms while also aiming to improve water quality and biodiversity as well as reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Ruairi is farming approximately 38ha in Kilmoganny.

Spring Calving
He runs a spring calving system, with the majority of bull calves brought to slaughter at under 16 months of age, with heifers and bullocks are sold as stores.

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This spring, Ruairi will calve down 44 cows. Over the last number of years, he has continued to increase the technical efficiency of his herd.

He has averaged a six-week calving rate of 78% over the last two years and is well above the national average on heifers calved at 22-26 months, regularly achieving 100% of heifers calved at this age.

As calving season can be a busy time and brings with it issues such as safety around cows calving and moving livestock, Ruairi has made a number of changes to make sure that health and safety is optimised around calving time.

In the last two years, he has installed new handling facilities for cattle, as well as purchasing a mobile handling unit which includes weighing scales.

This allows much safer handling of stock for animals which may need to be treated or for routine work such as vaccinating stock.

All calving pens are checked before calving to make sure calving gates are working correctly. This allows Ruairi to intervene safely if a cow needs assistance during calving.

Ruairí also uses ICBF to keep record of expected calving dates, allowing him to easily pick out cows which are expected to calf, as well as utilising data which he collects as part of SCEP for calving details and surveys.

This provides him with details such as calf and dam docility, allowing him to pick cows and heifers suitable for breeding from a docility point of view.

Five Stars
Ruairí’s sub index for docility is currently at five stars on the Euro Star index.
Overall, Ruairí has been able to improve the technical performance of his herd over the last few years while also improving infrastructure and utilising data available to him in order to improve health and safety on the farm.