In recent times, more and more Irish dairy farmers are choosing Limousin as their top choice of beef sire, so it’s no surprise that Limousin is the number one continental sire in the Irish dairy herd. Limousin can add value to calf sales without compromising on calving difficulty or gestation length – two essential requirements on any dairy farm.
This was echoed by New Ross Mart manager, Richie Kirwan, when we caught up with him to see how Limousin cattle are competing amongst other breeds.
“Limousin cattle are flying it in the mart,” Kirwan said. “At the moment, there is a large amount of dairy farmers in the New Ross area using a Limousin bull on their dairy cows. They are up there as one of the greatest breeds, and if you look at price reports from the last several months, you’ll see that Limousin is leading the way across all sale rings.”
He noted that after farmers use Friesian AI, the bull of choice is Limousin, as their offspring are ideal suckler cows and in high demand due to their mothering ability and abundance of milk.
“There would be a good amount of Limousin-cross dairy stock coming through the mart; farmers are getting super prices for their these animals.” He highlighted a group of black Limousin-cross heifers making “super money recently”. They weighed 400kg and sold for €1,130/head.
