Green Party politician Pippa Hackett, and her husband Mark, are part-time suckler/beef and sheep farmers based in Co. Offaly.

They are farming almost 200ac in north Offaly, and both work off farm.

Pippa is Minister of State for Land Use and Biodiversity and Mark is also involved in politics, as Green Party County Councillor on Offaly County Council.

Last week, Agriland traveled to the farm in Co. Offaly to find out more about the duo’s farming enterprise, which was converted to organic farming about eight years ago.

The pair were originally farming conventional beef and sheep but Pippa outlined they were “making no money from the farm” and said “we have to reassess this”.

Both Mark and Pippa have degrees in agriculture and run the farm in a joint effort.

Green party politician Pippa Hackett

When the couple sat down and crunched the numbers, they saw that 93% of the farm’s income was coming in the post and 7% was coming from the farm and so, they set about trying to make the farm more profitable.

Mark had worked on a dairy farm in New Zealand when he was younger and came home wanting to go dairying. However, his father said it wouldn’t work and Mark said “looking back, I think he was right”.

They outlined that dairy farming wasn’t considered as an option because the farm is fragmented.

“When the decision was made to go organic farming, the first thing we did was change the breeds we were using,” Pippa explained.

Sheep

The couple had a flock of winter lambing Suffolk ewes which they switched to Romny sheep.

Pippa explained: “We picked Romny sheep for our flock because they tick all the boxes; they’re easy keep and they’re good mothers.”

Continuing, she explained: “We used to sponge all our ewes and lamb in December. It worked well but we were very busy. We had probably 500 – 600 ewes at that stage and it was an incredibly time-consuming and expensive system as well.”

“We made the decision to change to a spring-lambing system where we lamb outdoors,” she added.

While a Romny ram is run with all the ewes having lambs intended for replacements, Chartex, Vendeen and Isle de France rams are run with ewes intended to produce factory lambs.

Rams let out around November 6, and lambing on the farm now takes place around April 1.

Sucklers

“With the sucklers we had mainly Charolais crosses and we had tried several types of continental bulls,” Pippa continued.

“We then changed our bull to a Stabiliser and we have been thrilled with it.

“They tend to have small calves but they all calve themselves and have excellent growth rates,” she added.

The cows on the farm now are all either first or second generation Stabiliser-cross cows.

Commenting on the breed, Pippa explained: “It’s a composite breed, although it breeds through in the progeny. The aim of the breed is efficiency, they’re bred to produce meat from forage and they’re polled and are very docile.”

Finishing cattle

“We finish all our cattle on the farm as heifers and steers. The weanlings get meal for a short while at weaning and that’s it,” Mark explained.

Because the beef and lamb produced on the farm is all organic, it is awarded a 15% premium by the processors which Mark noted “is quite good”.

“At the moment, our organic bonus on sheep is working out at about €20/lamb,” he said.

“On our beef, we get a 15% bonus on top of the conventional price. But we have also had a cutback on the input price so the margin we’re making per hectare compared to what we were is substantially more,” Pippa noted.

The organic cattle produced on the Hackett’s farm is bought by the processor at a flat price of €4.85/kg currently.

The beef heifers are killing out at around 300kg and the beef bullocks are around 330kg at under-30 months. If they grade above a five in flesh they get cut by 10c/kg.

In the organic system, livestock are only dosed as is required and dung sampling is carried out to see if dosing is necessary.

Pippa explained: “With cows, you’re not dosing them for years on end sometimes because the worm burden is extremely low in them.”

The Hacketts operate a closed herd and only the stock bulls and rams are bought in on the farm.

“We breed all our own replacements,” explained Pippa.

When switching to organics, a cubicle house house on the farm was converted to a dry bedded shed with a slatted area for cattle to stand on when feeding.

Commenting on the farm’s stocking rate, Pippa explained: “Interestingly, our stocking rate went up initially when we transitioned to organics. But, we didn’t want to go that route; we had a young family and we said ‘this has to be easier for us while still making money from the farm’, so we made the decision to go down to more manageable levels.”

The Green party duo's field

Commenting on input costs for the organic system, Mark explained: “We buy in a lot of straw – this year it has been very expensive but my attitude is that it’s the only input we have to buy, so we will bed them really well because that’s the gold going out on the land at the end of the year.

“The fields that get dung this year, I wouldn’t cut them next year for silage or hay because it takes that bit more time to break down – the following year it’s cut.”

Reseeding

When reseeding on the farm, multi-species swards are sown and Mark outlined the lambs are “finishing three weeks earlier on multi species swards – they really fly it on them”.

No fields are sprayed with glyphosphate and are instead grazed tightly and then shallow ploughed or tilled, and a fodder crop is sown in them first.

Weanlings are wintered on the fodder crop and the field is then reseeded the following spring.

Out wintering

Out-wintering works well for weanlings on the farm however, Mark explained: “It is time consuming moving the fence every day but cattle do a great thrive on it.”

Bales of silage are left in a line in the field at planting and weanlings generally start grazing the fodder crop from December 1.

The headlands aren’t ploughed on the fields so there’s a grassy lie back for cattle to lie on.

This year, a total of 16ac are sown in fodder crop with approximately 100 bales left around it.

Planning for the future, Mark and Pippa have plans to construct a new sheep-handling facility on their farm and continue to develop and improve the efficiency of their agricultural enterprise.