My name is Michael Barrett, and I have a farm in Inch, Dunmanway in the heart of West Cork.
I farm here, alongside my father JJ, and my brother James who runs the dairy farm. I am a secondary school maths and geography teacher, and I also run my own pedigree Hereford herd on the farm. My father JJ and my mother Mary bought their first Hereford cow in 1983 and as a family we have stuck with them ever since.
The Irish Herefords have a few traits that we like to have in a herd. The females are strong correct animals with good feet and legs, and good structure. That means that we can rely on them to breed a bull that can travel the distance every day that a dairy cow needs to travel for grass.
Showing was a big part of our childhood growing up. Dad started showing cattle in 1983 and it’s something that we picked up from him. We’ve had a great deal of success in the show ring in recent years, in 2023 Gurtaleen Inchvale Phoenix was the Irish Hereford Prime bull of the year and Inchvale Vinny was named Irish Hereford Prime bull of the year in 2024.
The Irish Herefords are easy calvers, they have a short gestation, and at the end of the day, the dairy farmer gets a quality calf that has good carcass traits and good growth rates.
We operate a strip grazing system on the farm, the cows and the young stock are allocated grass on a daily basis. We back fence a lot of the cattle to protect the regrowth and to avoid poaching. We reseed up to ten percent of the farm every year and we stitch in clover where possible. We have found that this has greatly reduced our fertiliser bill as well as giving great feed value to our pedigree Herefords.
I’m very excited for the future of the Hereford breed, I believe that they have the kind of traits that will fit into any farming system. I think the future is very bright for the breed.
