John & Emma Corless, farm at Crimlin, Claremorris where they run a Suckler Herd and also specialise in supplying high end replacement heifers.

Their Suckler cows are predominantly Simmental and are crossed with Simmental & Limousin Stockbulls. The Simmental is run with the mature cows while the Limousin usually gets the heifers and first calvers. The Corless’s like both Simmental & Limousin as both are easy calving and find calves have great hardiness and are up and suck quickly. This hardiness trait is very important where help is scarce.

Calving is split between Autumn and Spring as they find it reduced the pressure on space required at calving and they can also use a quality stock bull across a great percentage of cows. The other key advantage is that all stock are not for sale at the same time.

They like Simmental cows, mainly for their ability to calf and that fact that they will have adequate milk supply to rear their calves to allow those calves reach the maximum potential. As their young bull are mostly slaughtered at u16 months, its vitally important that these bull calves are gaining weight right through to weaning. The target daily gain at weaning for the bull calves is 1.5kgs / day.

Quality Autumn Calves

John & Emma also specialise bringing to the market, high end maiden replacement heifers. In addition to their own surplus heifers, they purchase quality weanling Simmental X heifers, which they sell yearly at the Simmental X heifer sale at Ballymote. The demand for quality maiden heifers is very strong as suckler farmers see Simmental dams as ideal for crossing with most continental Sires, to ensure quality progeny. They get great job satisfaction when repeat customers purchase their heifers. This is proof that their heifers are performing for suckler farmers.