New five-star bull at Ballyhaise

Ballyhaise Agricultural College is the proud owner of a proven five-star Limousin bull which goes under the colourful name of Carwin Viscount. The College purchased the bull from Ray Carolan, with the intention of keeping his female offsprings as replacements, thus improving the quality of the suckler herd. Carwin Viscount has produced excellent beef cattle that have been easy to finish and have graded well. He has been used on Limousin, Simmental and Angus cows and also on heifers, because of his easy calving qualities. He is an exceptional bull and has five stars for all of the main beef indexes and traits, as displayed on the ICBF Bull search. The suckler beef value comes in at a remarkable €206, while the beef carcas value returns at €164. His sire Roundhill Saturn is in the top one per cent for all beef traits within the Limousin breed. He was purchased as a nine-month-old bull calf by Ray Carolan from the Roundhill Herd of Doreen and Timothy Corridan. His pedigree is exceptional, sired by Ideal 23 and out of a geant cow 'Roundhill Meridian'. He is one of the few on farm tested bulls available through the AI. Semen is now widely available through NCBC or Progressive Genetics. He gives the suckler farmer the opportunity to avail of these genetics. With a calving difficulty of just 3.79 per cent and a reliability of 86 per cent for calving traits, he can be quite safely used on heifers. To find out more what does five stars really mean from an on farm practical viewpoint, Damien McDonald, the Ballyhaise College Herd Keeper put the matter into perspective. He explained that at Ballyhaise they keep 60 suckler cows. All progeny are finished as beef cattle with the heifers finishing at 22 months and steers finishing at 24 months. Any heifers suitable for breeding are kept as replacements for the herd. The cows are mostly crossbred Limousins and Simmentals. All of the replacements for the herd come from the suckler herd. Heifers kept this year have an average suckler beef value of €189 and calve at two years of age. All of his progeny have been well shaped and well muscled. Many of them have graded 'U' and had carcase kill-outs of 57-58%.