Organic beef and lowland ewe farmer, Kay O'Sullivan is set to open the gates to her Co. Cork-based farm next week.

Kicking off at 6:00p.m on Friday, July 25, the event is taking place in conjunction with Teagasc’s Future Beef team.

O'Sullivan's farm, situated in Mallow, is comprised of 63.2ha of free-draining loam, where she farms 25 suckler to store beef cattle, 75 ewes, and has 11.6ha of forestry planted too.

However, she aims to reduce her ewe numbers while simultaneously increasing her beef herd.

The walk will focus on: breeding strategies; animal health and performance; multispecies swards; red and white clover; composting of farm yard manure; and finances.

O'Sullivan is farming the land herself but avails of hired labour.

She has a prime focus on on herd fertility, maintaining a calving interval and six-week calving rate of 83%.

She uses 100% AI, typically to pedigree Angus bulls, at the end of May, with this year's team aiming to deliver 8.9kg for carcass weight, 6.6kg for milk, and -5.67 days for calving interval.

The organic farmer wants to place a stronger emphasis on carcass weight and milk quality this year.

As her animals never receive any concentrates throughout their lives, O'Sullivan puts great effort into producing high quality silage.

O'Sullivan carries out weekly farm walks to identify where grass is not performing as well as when to cut silage.

Her efforts gave her 11t of dry matter (DM) per ha in 2024, and she cut her first 75%DM digestible (DMD) red clover silage on May 2, averaging six bales/ac.

After this, O'Sullivan went with 2,500 gallons of slurry/ac to keep up grass performance.

The organic farmer reseeded her 2024/2025 crop of redstart in exchange for a multi species sward earlier in the year.

She included red clover, white clover, plantain, chicory, perennial ryegrass, and timothy grass, and stated that the field is growing well now after receiving 2,500 gallons of slurry/ac too.