He said that 2025 has been "a brilliant year for farming", with a "good, early spring, good growing summer months, and a relatively kind back-end to the year".

He said that the farm had a tricky-enough grazing season and probably didn’t grow as much grass as previous years, but still managed to make up to 1,300 bales of silage which should see it safely through the winter - however long it may be.

As of December 18, all 2024-born animals had been slaughtered from both the ABP demo farm and the Tully Progeny Test Centre.

The farm manager said: "Carcass performance has been good with weights, grades and fat scores where we would like them to be".

The last of the weanlings were housed just before winter and the 2025-born dairy-beef calves performed well overall.

Out of the 419 dairy-beef calves bought-in this year, only three were lost in the rearing period, which is considered a low mortality rate.

The calves performed well at grass and incidences of summer scour syndrome were low.

The farm manager believes the new post-weaning strategy for the calves is helping to reduce the incidents of summer scour on the farm.

As well as this, "the use of straw in the field, keeping calves away from recently fertilised ground, and avoiding very lush covers definitely helped," Maher said.

The calf arrival and weaning weights have been steady compared to other years, with milk replacer usage slightly back on 2024 levels at 26kg milk powder/calf.

Performance on milk has been good, according to Maher, with an average daily liveweight gain of 0.69kg/calf/day.

The table below details the calf arrival weights, weaning weights and number of days on milk:

The calf vaccine programme remained much the same as previous years, with Maher saying it "is something we feel is very robust".

The table below outlines the calf vaccination plan on the ABP Demo Farm:

Calves were dung sampled and treated for worms accordingly for the summer months.

A combination of white, yellow, and clear wormers were used subject to veterinary advice.

"Mixing wormers and only treating animals when necessary is the key to reducing anthelminthic resistance," the farm manager said.

All yearlings are housed weighed 270kg as of mid-December.

Their diet is as follows:

2kg concentrates;
Red clover silage;
Grass silage;
3kg beet.

Over 30ac were reseeded on the ABP Demo Farm over the autumn.

A high red and white clover mix was used and swards seem to be performing quite well, Maher said.

"We will aim to graze these reseeds lightly in the early spring."

Carcass performance of heifers and steers:

The two tables below show the average finishing performance of the spring-2024-born heifers (finished in 2025) versus the 2023-born heifers (finished in 2024) by sire breed:

2024-born heifers:

2023-born heifers:

The two tables below show the average finishing performance of the 2024-born steers (finished in 2025) versus the 2023-born steers (finished in 2024) by sire breed:

2024-born steers:

2023-born steers:

Commenting on the kill-out performance of the cattle slaughtered this year, Maher said that the number of days on the finishing diet increased this year.

He also noted that the Belgian Blue and Aubrac-sired heifers performed "very poorly" but said that the other breeds were steady.

"The Limousin steers were behind on last year's whilst the heifers were relatively the same."

The table below details the count of the carcass grades for all dairy-beef cattle slaughtered this year:

"The farm is consistently averaging around 80 days finishing period," he said.

Farm events

The farm had several events this year with the most notable being a 10-year anniversary celebration for the ABP Demo Farm.

The fam manager said: "We had industry leaders in attendance along with representative who helped us through the 10 years.

"We also opened the gates to farmers for an event in conjunction with Animal Health Ireland (AHI)."

Store lamb update

There are 650 store lambs currently grazing the farm. These lambs started on concentrates in December and drafting for slaughter will commence in the coming weeks.

Silage supplementation will be introduced if necessary.

Concluding, the farm manager said: "On behalf of everyone at the ABP Demo Farm, we would like to wish everyone a safe and prosperous 2026."