The matriarch and inspirational women
Georgie Hynes clipping her jersey heifer Rathard Chocochip Dream
As spring finally arrived, so did more new life on the farm, but this calf was a little bit special.
Alanna is a real matriarch cow in the herd, she commands respect from the other cows and rightly so as she has completed nine full lactations. Between daughters and granddaughters, she has 12 descendants going through the parlour and she even became a great great granddam this spring.
She is a grand dam to two All-Ireland EBI champions, she herself classified EX92 with an EX91 daughter. Her average SCC over nine lactations is 63, and her udder just keeps getting better.
With a cow of her age, it’s a case of fingers crossed hoping they’ll go back in calf, so last year, Pete took a gamble and bred her to MB Luckylady Bullseye (sexed semen), he is one of the most talked about young sires, his dam is a three-time winner at World Dairy Expo and his sister is a junior champion at WDE, he delivers confirmation in his progeny.
True to form, Alanna held to the AI serve and delivered her tenth calf this week, 10 days before her due date, a lovely heifer named Rathard Bullseye Alanna.
Fingers crossed, she will stay healthy and progress well, as I really like the Bullseye calves; our two-year-old Eedy Rubicon Acclaim had a Bullseye heifer last August, which has progressed really well and is being prepared for shows at the moment.
We had a visit from our Munster Bovine farm relationship Anthony Buckley this week, it is always a useful meeting to look through calves that have arrived over the last few months and also discuss our breeding goals going forward.
As Anthony's role suggests, it is always about building up a good relationship so he knows exactly why we make certain breeding decisions on the farm and supports us in ensuring semen is in our tank or with our AI tech when we need it. We probably make Anthony's job a little harder as we are always sourcing new bulls that need to be coded, but every farm is a team effort.
As Pete said to our tech this week, one person might show an animal in the ring, and one person might milk it in the parlour, but it takes a team to breed it, keep it healthy and see it progress. Our Munster Bovine AI tech David Murphy is a huge asset to the farm, he calls when needed, always gives great feedback on how well animals are bulling and together we get great conception rates.
Breeding is being refined a lot more for the season ahead, we have thirteen animals being contract mated which will receive conventional semen, any other cows we require daughters from will receive sexed semen and we have ordered five commercial bulls available sexed, further to that we will use two Charolais AI beef sires.
To make the job simpler and faster for the AI tech, we will hang breeding charts prior to breeding season with the details of each mating on the charts, the ultimate goal to maximise beef use on the farm and at least with the charts everyone knows the plan.
Becky flew out to Bristol this week; it really is so handy being able to fly out from Cork airport, she was on the farm until lunchtime, a quick shower, a bite of grub, and we left home at 3:30pm, and she was sitting at her flight gate at 4:10pm.
She is in Devon with Molly Westwood helping with final preparations for Borderway UK Dairy Expo and they will head up to Carlisle early next week with the team of heifers. As Becky was getting ready for the UK, Georgie was getting the first clip completed on her Jersey heifer Dream in preparation for the coming show season.
Dream has really matured into a super heifer, she won at all three National shows last year and she just keeps getting better and better, hopefully she will have a little luck in the show ring this year. As I watch how the girls have gained confidence in the show ring and learned new skills in preparing show animals.
These are all women who have come up through the young show ranks, who have judged the girls in the show ring, travelled the world, are great handlers in the show ring. The mentorship, the positive comment in the show ring, the belief in asking the girls to handle for them has really inspired so much confidence.
I remember one of these women said to Becky before she went into a championship, “I know you can win this Becky, you just need to believe you can,” and she did win it, but now, as I watch her in the ring, she is calmer as she believes she can succeed and while they inspire Becky, work with her, that confidence rubs off on Georgie and she learns from Becky and as they judge the girls in the show ring, they believe the duo can compete with each other.
I think there is a lesson for all of us women in that inspiring one young woman has a snowball effect and filters down to inspire many more. Agriculture has always been seen as a male-dominated industry, but I say to all the women who have made a successful career in agriculture, let's keep that snowball rolling, and the industry will be dominated by equality.
