New Teagasc role for Tullyvin farmer

David Argue brings his vast experience, both in his work with Teagasc and his life in running a farm, to his new role as Teagasc Cattle Specialist.

David is newly appointed as a cattle specialist covering the North East. The new post sees the Tullyvin man return to the Ballyhaise base, where he held one of his first Teagasc roles as an education officer. He also previously worked as a Teagasc Green Acres Calf to Beef Cattle Advisor.

Until recent weeks, David had been based in Navan as a Business and Technology Drystock Advisor covering Louth, Meath, Dublin, Laois, Kildare advisory region. There he helped farmers improve efficiency within the farmgate, by carrying out the latest best practice backed by Teagasc research.

David breaks the secret to efficiency down to “three very simple” factors: breeding, feeding and management.

“They are the three main areas I try to get farmers to focus on,” he begins.

In terms of breeding David encourages farmers to focus on traits they want as a suckler farmer, or a beef farmer.

“For breeding they need to use high genetic merit bulls and keep high replacement next cows - keep decent family lines that have bred well for them in the past. Know what replacements to keep, and know what bulls to use in the future and focus in on certain areas where maybe your herd is lacking - for example, maybe milk or carcass weight.”

He emphasises that feeding is a “massive” factor.

“There’s no point having your breeding right if your feeding is not right because you are not going to have the fuel to power the whole lot if you don’t have your feeding right. That comes down to grassland management first of all because grass is the main and cheapest source of feed.”

He stresses how farmers need to have their soil tested for pH and fertility to ensure it can grow decent quality grass with grazings occurring at the right times and the right height.

“That then leads to making good quality first cut and second cut silage - getting farmers geared up early in the spring time to get the silage ground either grazed or, if not grazed have it geared up to get it cut so they can have a reasonably early second cut which is of decent quality.”

Farm management is the “final piece of the jigsaw”, according to David, who has a Master’s in Animal Behaviour and Welfare from Queens University Belfast.

“Everything has to fit into place and it’s up to you the farmer to make it fit into place,” he says noting this could involve farmers upskilling to be able to responsibly manage as many issues within the farmgate as possible.

As you would expect, David is a born and bred farmer.

“I don’t know much else bar farming,” he says with a laugh.

David and his father, also David, run two farms in partnership, in Drung and nearby Tullyvin where they keep just over 50 good quality commercial cattle.

“It’s a straight forward system: we do under 16 month bulls and then heifers go back to grass for second feeding.

“We have had suckler cows here for as long as I can remember and we bring them all to beef. Again we’ve had sheep here for as long as I can remember - we breed pedigree Charollais Sheep and Suffolk sheep as well the last couple of years.”

They run a well oiled system to manage both sheep and cattle.

“We start off with the spring time lambing pedigree sheep in January, that runs then until the cows calve in February and March , and then we have another batch of ewes lamb in early March - to be straight and honest with you, when you are fed up with the sheep you can go to the cattle, and when you’re sick of the cattle you can go back to the sheep,” he jokes.

He derives huge enjoyment from breeding quality livestock.

“It’s the whole breeding side of things I have a big love for - breeding and seeing genetics carry on in future lines - knowing that you’ve put your stamp on the genetics of that animal. That’s where I get my real buzz, on the breeding side of things.”

Turning to his new role with Teagasc, David says: “I’m looking forward to working with farmers, advisors and the wider agricultural industry, bringing science backed technical messages to support cattle farmers to be profitable and sustainable.

“For example there are opportunities for more farmers, both dairy and beef producers, to use the Commercial Beef Value (CBV) index as a criteria for purchasing calves. By integrating this innovative technology farmers can gain invaluable insights into the genetic potential of the calves particularly regarding carcass weight, conformation, and predicted age at slaughter.”

Pearse Kelly, Head of the Teagasc Drystock Knowledge Transfer Department, congratulated David on his appointment. He said: “David brings valuable experience and knowledge to the Cattle Specialist team, and I look forward to working closely with him as we exchange technical knowledge with cattle producers, from the Teagasc beef research programme.”