Buy quickly and start milking

IN an unusual touch, agricultural consultant Mike Brady of the Brady Group usually gives a PowerPoint presentation before each auction he holds.

A marketing ploy, maybe?

“It just looks good,” Brady replies. And it seems to work, because the last property he sold at auction in June made close to its pre-auction guide of €1.7m. The property was bid up to €1.5m and withdrawn at that level, to be sold less than an hour later for an undisclosed sum. That property, at Carrigcastle, Newmarket, included 140 acres of tillage land, with the remainder in grass.

One successful sale begs another, perhaps, because this week The Brady Group are selling a perfect dairy operation at Meelin, also in the Newmarket area.

Running to 120 acres and including a very attractive, modern farm house, the sale offers a young farmer a great opportunity to move in and start milking, because the vendors are open to selling lock stock and barrel, subject to negotiation. Alternatively, the property could be purchased as an add-on to an existing dairy operation.

Located at Meelin, the farm will go to auction on Dec 12 at the Deerpark Hotel, Charleville, and carries a pre-auction guide of €1.4m, including house, yard and land in one lot.

Equidistant from Cork and Limerick and just outside of Newmarket town, this farm at Meenishall is within commuting distance of Charleville (28km) and Mallow (35km), and is a retirement sale.

Described as a warm, undulating farm with sheltered pastures, it has very good land for the area, says Mike Brady, with a proven record of long grazing seasons.

In one single block, it also comes with a central farm roadway, with each paddock within easy access of the yard, he adds.

The yard is modern, with a range of good buildings, in very presentable condition, and it includes a modern milking parlour and a wide range of sheds around a long concrete apron.

The farm comes with a single farm payment of €14,887, and has a milk quota of 83,000 gallons (377,235 litres)

“The lands are well serviced by farm roadways and paddock fencing for ease of grassland management, says Mike Brady, and water comes from a mains supply, and there is a bored well, too.”

The farm as it’s laid out is perfect as a dairy farm, he concludes, and is likely to be purchased as such, or as an addition to an existing holding.

“It’s a good block of land, well laid out, and is a modern dairy farm. And there’s always the potential to add onto the land here. It’s much harder elsewhere,” he concludes.

And add to that a really good, five-bed farmhouse, and it’s a very attractive proposition for an extended family, perhaps.

Built in 1999, it comes with a large kitchen/diner, utility, office, sitting room, ground floor bathroom and four bedrooms overhead, with master en-suite. The surrounding grounds are well laid out, and the house has some good quality fixtures and fittings, including antique fire places.

Heating is by oil, and the kitchen includes a modern Aga cooker.

At the guide price of €1.3m, giving the house a nominal value of €250,000, the guide price per acre is in the region of €8,750 per acre. Considering the package, it should draw in interest from neighbouring and young farmers.