The 200-head Roundhill Pedigree Limousin Herd is based in Fedamore, Co. Limerick.

Established in 1996, it is owned and managed by Timothy, Doreen and Katie Corridan with the assistance of George Doyle.

The prominent pedigree Limousin herd is set to host a production sale this coming weekend from October 3-7.

Included in the sale is 20 heifers, 14 of which are off polled Limousin genetics.

Agriland caught up with Doreen Corridan ahead of the online sale to hear the backstory to the sale of 20 maiden heifers.

She explained that the focus of the herd is different to most Limousin breeders in that the herd genetics has embarked down the polled Limousin route approximately a decade ago.

She said: "I'd be the only breeder in Ireland really breeding polled Limousins. It's very rare. If you take across Europe, the majority of the Limousins out there are all polled now.

"The sires I have used would be completely different to the horned sires. The initial bull I used was Hinz and a lot of the pedigrees go back to him.

"I used Karlos, Idalgo and more recently, JK Miro. For the last two/three years, I've been using two bulls from France, Pilaf and Orex."

She also said that AI companies in France are focusing "quite a bit" on polled bulls but said "it takes quite a bit of time for the imported stock from France to get up into high figures here".

Commenting on the cow families the heifers in the sale are bred from, she said: "When I spoke to the older breeders in France 10 years ago, their point was, do not come out here to France and buy a homozygous heifer and taker her home and flush her and put bulls on her.

"They say it's slow, but it's fast in the long run."

Commenting on the cow families, she said a lot of these were imported from France in the past. These include:

Giroflee: Tullamore Champion and bred Nenuthar;
Disette: Bred dam of Ideal 23;
Leny: Milk and fertility.

She added that the sale will appeal to breeders looking to produce their own polled pedigree Limousin bulls. There's six homozygous heifers in it, polled is dominant so you're guaranteed polled calves off those and there's eight heterozygous heifers in it, also polled, so there's 14 polled heifers in it.

She also said it will also appeal to SCEP farmers as well as farmers looking to breed show progeny from some of the heifers in the sale.

Her advice to young breeders looking to source a good breeding heifer was: "At the moment, an awful lot of the market is for extreme shape because it's extreme shape that's selling.

"If you take any of the top bulls with extreme shape, one, two or three generations behind that, what you have is a big, powerful female with an awful lot of width.

"You have to have the width in the pelvis, the other thing is she has to be fertile and she has to have milk. You want a long female because long adds weight.

"Animals that are long will weigh heavy and you will get heavy animals without difficult calving and enough width that they will calve comfortably."

The sale will take place online via timed auction on MartEye in association with Mid Tipperary Co-operative Livestock Mart (Thurles Mart) with bidding drawing to a close at 8:00pm on Tuesday, October 7.