Lessons learned from a lifetime in farming

HONOUR Cavan man presented with IHFA lifetime achievement award

Having recently been awarded a lifetime achievement award for his work with the Irish Holstein Friesian Association (IHFA), it’s fair to say that Bobby Franks has forgotten more about cattle than most people will ever know.

The Dublin native come Cavan resident has held a variety of roles across different agricultural organisations and despite retiring over a decade ago is still regularly called upon to advise farmers about breeding stock.

Bobby recently sat down with The Anglo-Celt to discuss his life in farming.

“I was born near Stepaside on a small farm where we milked a few cows, and as a schoolboy I worked checking in cattle to the export auctions on Prussia Street. There was an export sale of up to 2,800 cattle and they were sent via ferry from the North Wall to places like Birkenhead, Hollyhead and Liverpool.”

From there Bobby went to work with an auctioneering company, where he learned much about the world of dairy genetics.

“I started working for Ganley Auctioneers, working in charge of land letting. When I was there, there was a very well known herd of Friesian cows owned by Captain James McCarthy of Bracklin near Delvin put up for sale, after he died suddenly. There were close to 900 pedigree animals to be sold.

“I was sent to help his wife with the sales, doing jobs like making the sale catalogue and during the sales my job was ‘reading the pedigrees i.e. for all of the lots I’d read out information such as the cow’s sire, the dam’s sire, the dams’s top lactation etc.”

The sale was a massive success for Bobby on a personal and professional level as he explains.

“The sales got record prices, so much so that hey were even written about in the Farmers Weekly in the UK, which was a very big deal at the time.

“They also worked out well for me personally because I learned a lot about bloodlines and genetics and I also became well known for my role within the world of pedigree cattle in Ireland.”

The McCarthy sale triggered a domino affect for Bobby as he was then sought out for a series of roles in the world of cattle breeding over the years.

“A few years after I got a call from the Jersey Cattle Society asking me to be their secretary. I became well known for my work with them doing commentary on shows and sales, which led to me getting approached a lot for doing work at shows around the country.

“Through this, I got a job selling bull semen all across the country, where I developed a good rapport with farmers all across the north of the country, and was regularly approached for breeding advice.”

Regarded as an authority on such matters eventually led Bobby to the IHFA.

“I got a job as a field officer with the IHFA in 1994. I spent over a decade and a half in the role but I still get phone calls from farmers living all over the country looking for advice around breeding.

“One of the jobs I had was called Grading Up. It’s a process that is ratified by the EU and involves where if the farmer can prove the sire of an existing animal as well as its mother and grandmother then they could register the animal as a pedigree. People thought it would interfere with the purity of the breed but it brought more people into pedigree breeding which means they get more for their cattle when they sell them.

“When I started off there was a massive backlog, so for the first five years I worked 12-14 hours a day, six days a week, registering them all manually. Computers have only become involved in the last couple of years.”

Bobby treated the farmers he advised through his IHFA work as more than simply a client.

“I developed a strong relationship with farmers to the extent that I became like an outside family member to them. I’d take phonecalls with them at 10pm at night. I’d always do my best to help them out, even if it meant going out to them late in the evening, especially if they were in trouble.

“I liked looking after people. Farmers are the most appreciative people in the world, they’re honest and hard-working.”

In the future, Bobby predicts the role of farmers will become increasingly important globally.

“Farming has a very good future. Three per cent of the world’s arable surface was lost last year, and this is going to increase in the coming years. Food production is going to become more and more important over time. It is going to become the thing to be at.”