The Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association (ICSA) recently hosted a representative from the American National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) on a tour of Irish suckler and beef farms.
The NCBA’s chair of international trade, Jaclyn Wilson, visited a number of Irish suckler farms following her attendance on a US trade mission to the UK.
Wilson’s visit to Ireland included stops at suckler farms located in the Burren region as well as counties Roscommon, Galway and Meath.
The visit to Ireland also included a visit to an Irish beef processing plant.
Wilson runs a cattle ranch in Nebraska alongside her father. The Wilson Flying Diamond Ranch keeps between 700-1,000 breeding cows depending on the year, and also runs yearling cattle on approximately 8,000ha.
The farm was established in 1888 and is located on the western edge of the Nebraska Sandhills.
By Irish comparisons, the stocking rate on her Nebraskan farm is quite low. Wilson said: “We’re at one cow per 20ac. The reason we don’t overstock is conservation reasons.”
The farm uses no chemical fertiliser and only receives approximately 12-14in of rainfall every year.
The ranch has been awarded for its conservation efforts and has also hosted a number of conservation projects, including photographing insects for National Geographic’s Photo Ark and collecting sonar data on bat populations.
Giving her perspectives on the Irish suckler industry, Wilson said: “Beef farming in Ireland is similar in scale to the east coast of the US. Our average herd size in the US is actually only 43 or 44 head of cattle.
“From a comparison of an Irish suckler farm and what I do in Nebraska, the cattle are definitely a lot bigger here (in Ireland),” she continued.
“With the environment you have you’re pushing larger-framed cattle and are really focused on the muscle, especially the double muscling here which is very unique. We don’t deal with double muscling at all like the Belgian Blues, and there’s very few Charolais cattle in Nebraska.
“It’s been really interesting, from a phenotype point of view, the variation in cattle just because they’re so large when we are really focused on a small, moderate frame, efficient, low-maintenance animal because of our environment.
“Farmers also winter indoors here which I find is a very unique concept to us because we keep everything outside all year round.”
The breed types primarily used on the farm are Angus, Red Angus and Simmental cattle. The target finishing weight is 1,600 pounds (roughly 725kg) at 20-22-months of age.
Unlike many suckler farms in Nebraska, the Wilson farm calves cows in both spring and autumn.
Spring-born calves are weaned at 5-7 months, and autumn-born calves are weaned at just over 100 days.
Commenting on the early weaning for autumn-born calves, Jaclyn said: “It takes the pressure off the cow for winter because we hardly supplement at all, they’re fed on corn stalks.”
She also explained that when calves are weaned early, it reduces the farm’s overall costs and she said that this system has been in place on the farm for the past three years and there have been “no major issues”.
“This is the third year I’ve done it and I have had no issues,” she said.
“I just feed them [the weanlings] a higher concentrate ration. The ration consists of hay, corn silage distillers grain and beet pulp and I just increase the amount of distillers and beet pulp in the ration.”
When the spring-born calves are weaned in October, the calves go to pasture until January.
“We bring them into our lot an put them on ration from January to May and they go back to grass then,” Wilson said.
“We start bringing them off from August to October, depending on what the market situation is, and either market them privately or finish them out on feed.”
The Wilsons’ farm also finishes a percentage of cattle with the beef sold directly to the consumer.
“A small percentage of cattle go to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) harvest facility and we can sell anything from a whole animal to individual cuts and ship them anywhere in the US,” Wilson said.
Wilson explained that to avail of this option “the beef has been specifically selected by being genomically tested for tenderness. It has to be in the upper third of all tenderness ratings”.
The farm takes on interns from a number of different countries every year. The farm’s location is quite remote, with Wilson explaining that “the nearest shop where we can get a gallon of milk is a one-hour drive”.
Commenting on the interest in agriculture among young Americans, Wilson said: “There’s a lot of kids with an interest in agriculture the problem is, it’s really tough to be able to go out and buy your own operation with the cost of equipment [and] livestock and you can’t make that cash flow too easy.”
Cattle growth promoters
Growth promoters are used in beef production on many farms in the US. These are not permitted in beef production in the European Union.
Commenting on the use of growth promoters in beef cattle, Wilson said: “People want to do a lot on climate but want to do this by decreasing cow numbers and that’s not necessarily a solution.
“You can improve sustainability by improving efficiencies and one of the things growth promoters do is improve the efficiency of a beef animal.
“The EU is the only market we deal with that has any concern about growth promoters because in the US, it’s not an issue.
“When there’s so much talk about sustainability, I think it’s something that needs to be looked at,” Wilson concluded.