Growing two businesses at once

Chris Cahill’s Cavan Grassland Consultancy (CGC) has grown over the last five years.

Having started out measuring grass for neighbours in 2017, a Cavan man has a thriving business helping over 100 farmers to manage grass.

Chris Cahill’s Cavan Grassland Consultancy (CGC) has grown over the last five years to a client base that extends as far south as Offaly.

“I started out measuring grass with one or two local farmers. I never pushed it in terms of marketing, it spread by word of mouth. I started working with one farmer and then going to work for their neighbour. We now offer grass management services to farmers across the North Midlands, from Cavan, Monaghan, Meath, Longford, Westmeath, and down into Offaly. We do 30-40 grass walks a year for each of them.

“There’s a team of 11 self-employed grassland technicians who do the measuring and I make the calls to the farmers to go through the wedges.

“With the changes in derogation rules there is a requirement for any farmer in derogation to do at least 20 grass measurements a year, so it looks like there’ll be an increase in demand for us over the coming years.

“I’ve taken on a new worker who’s going to do a bit of the advisory work alongside myself and we’re probably up to taking on another person of that ilk heading into next year as well, to spread the workload as the clients increase,” says Chris who now lives in Kells.

Chris was also always interested in farming himself, having grown up working on his uncle’s farm. While he didn’t have family farm of his own to work on, he saw how the share farming model worked on college placement in New Zealand and decided to emulate that in Ireland.

He entered into a share milking agreement with a farmer in Delvin earlier in 2022 through the Macra Land Mobility Service.

“I saw how young guys get into farming in New Zealand and after a few unsuccessful attempts, I came across this opportunity through the land mobility service and was linked up with the farmer in May of last year. There were a couple of candidates going for it and we all had to put forward our preferred plan for the farm. Thankfully mine was the one that was selected and we entered a share farming partnership in January of 2022.”

Trust

While managing both CGC and a farm is hard, Chris finds having a good support system is important.

“It’s tough to balance both, they each require a high level of time. On the farm this year, we’re doing a lot of infrastructure work and I’ve been project managing a lot of it. I work in liaison with the builders setting up the layout of the new yards and sheds in conjunction with the day-to-day running of the farm.

“You trust your staff”, he said. “Once you have a good team around you, it makes it that bit easier. My family has been a massive help. My partner Eve has been a phenomenal help, without her and my family, I probably wouldn’t have been able to do what I’ve done.”

The farm is made up of a 71 hectares grazing block with 180 milking cows. However, Chris hopes to increase numbers over the coming years.

“I’m hoping to progress to 220 to 240 cows over the coming years,” Chris explains. “Originally the farm was made up of old-style British Friesian cows but gradually this changed to high EBI New Zealand kind of crossbreds. We’re aiming to finish off with a cow that’s going to milk 6,000l with 530 kilos of solids.

“We are working on that all the time to leave it a very simple system. We’ve done a big job on fencing this year and roadways are pretty much at every paddock and we put in a new water system.”

Chris is also working hard to make sure the farm is more sustainable.

“All the reseeding has been done with clover in the mixes so the grazing mixtures are done with highly palatable high-sugar grasses with two kilos of white clover. We reseeded two fields this year of silage ground with red clover mixes to try and to reduce reliance on chemical nitrogen.”