SLIGO SUCKLER FARMER CHOOSES SIMMENTAL AS HIS HERD SIRE

Mr. Richard Woodmartin who farms at Woodville Farm on the outskirts of Sligo city has chosen Simmental as his herd sire. This year he has 28 cows calving down to the Simmental bull “Hillcrest Romeo” which he bought at the Roscommon Premier Society Sale in November 2005. The bull is sired by Hillcrest Champion and was bred by Padge Mulhare, Cloghan, Co. Offaly. With seven heifers and three cows already calved with little or no assistance he is very satisfied with the quality of the calves, particularly so with the fact that he has had six heifers from the first nine calved.  The quality of the bull calves is exceptional. Richard choose Simmental as his herd sire as he wanted milk and easy to handle cows. His cows are a mixture of Simmental, Limousin and a few Angus and Charolais.

He has bought his Simmentals as heifers in Ballymote and Raphoe at the Special Simmental Heifer Sales and with Charolais and Limousin sires in the herd he used AI Simmental to breed his replacements and has used Hurtig (HRG), Plant (AS12) and Hillcrest King (HKG). Richard is a strong believer in having a closed herd and breeding his own replacements was uppermost in his mind in purchasing the Simmental bull. Another factor in choosing Simmental was the price of Simmental heifers for replacements – he now knows he will be able to command a premium price for his surplus weanling heifers at the breeding heifer sales.

Richard is no stranger to Simmentals having worked as the manager of Major Hill’s “Brittas Simmental Herd” in Ashford, Co. Wicklow for a number of years in the early 1980’s. He then returned home to take over the home farm of 140 acres. In 1989 he was choosen as the suckler farmer of the year by the Farmers Journal. His farm is now a Teagasc monitor farm and also a REPS demonstration farm.