Two Wexford farmers win awards at RDS Livestock Awards

Over the last two days, the RDS, Ballsbridge in Dublin have hosted ‘Finding Common Ground’, a festival on biodiversity and sustainability. As part of the event, the RDS Livestock Awards also took place…

Linked to the ICBF and Sheep Ireland databases, the awards draw attention to the carbon footprint of production and highlight those farmers who are at the forefront of the economic and environmental sustainability of Irish Agriculture.  

Wexford farmers Paul Keating, Creacon, New Ross and Donal Martin Murphy, Ferns were among the winners, taking home the RDS-ICBF Euro-Star Herd Award and RDS-ICBF Economic Breeding Index Award respectively.

Wexford Winners

Paul Keating received the 2024 RDS-ICBF Euro-Star Herd Award which recognises excellence in the best herd based on a number of key measures including calving interval, percentage of heifers calved between 22 and 26 months of age, spring 6-week calving rate, and Euro-Star replacement index. Paul operates a suckler to beef system and currently has 69 commercial suckler cows. It is a family run farm with Paul’s wife Elaine, son’s MJ, Billy, and Sam along with his parents Michael and Kathleen all involved. They run the sucklers alongside a tillage enterprise of mainly malting barley.

Donal Martin Murphy received the 2024 RDS-ICBF Economic Breeding Index Award which recognises excellence in identifying the most profitable bulls and cows for breeding dairy herd replacements. Donal’s bull has 7,057 dairy calving records in the database, which is extremely impactful on the overall industry. Donal’s farm operates a split calving herd of cows. They calve 40-50% of the herd in the October/November period with the remainder calving in the Spring.

Finding Common Ground Festival

The inaugural two-day event was delivered as one of the RDS Foundation social impact programmes. It incorporated presentations and panel discussions exploring how Ireland can harness the benefits of our natural resources and the circular economy with a view to creating increased awareness, education, and identification of solutions to act on.

About RDS

RDS, the organisation that drives positive change for Ireland, is a philanthropic organisation operating in a membership context to make Ireland a better place for all. The purpose of the RDS is to inspire, enable and empower positive change. The RDS Foundation delivers programmes, bursaries and activities on an all-island basis across five key areas including Agriculture, the Arts, Enterprise, Equestrianism, Science and Technology. All events which take place at the RDS venue create the resources to support the work of the RDS Foundation.

For more visit www.rds.ie  

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