I farm: ”With my wife Teresa, who’s a primary school teacher, my two oldest daughters Kate and Lucy are finished school, Rosa is doing her Leaving Cert and Grace is my farming lady, she’ll be 15 in May. We’re farming 116ha all together — we own half and rent half of it.”

Cows: ”I’m milking 213 high EBI Friesian cows and I’m very pleased with how they’re milking at the minute. We’re well into the second rotation and they’re doing 2kg of milk solids. I supply Mullinahone Co-op.”

Replacements: “We had 50 maiden heifers this year. We use sexed semen for the replacements and have some extra to sell this year too.”

Beef calves: ”We sold around 80 calves to a neighbour and we went to the mart in Cashel with around 20 more. We did a lot of beef last year — we had Angus, Hereford, Belgian Blue and a few Charolais. It’s all AI really and we’ve an Angus bull to clean up the heifers at the end. The most pleasing thing this year was the price of calves and the demand for them.”

Grass: ”We’re in a good position for grass. We got plenty of fertiliser out and we have good covers going into the second round. Our silage ground is ready to go for an early cut any time from 20 May to the start of June.”

Urea ban: ”I’m disappointed that granular urea is not going to be available anymore. That doesn’t rest easy with me. I used granular urea this year and it worked quite well and I’ll use protected urea in the summer — I can’t see the logic in stopping farmers from using it.”

Derogation: ”I’m in derogation and I’d be very hopeful that we will hold onto it.”

Triplets: ”We were delighted this year to have triplet calves. We had three Angus heifer calves and we’ll keep them until autumn.”