The Shinnick family have been selected as the inaugural winners of the Dairy Beef Gene Ireland User Competition. The award, sponsored by ICBF and FBD, was presented as part of the 2026 ICBF Beef Quality Awards.
Donal Shinnick has been involved in farming for 45 years. He inherited the farm near Buttevant, Co. Cork, at 27 years of age. It was the home farm and had been purchased by his parents in 1979.
The farm enterprise has evolved from dairy and beef to mostly dairy. The dairy herd of 430 cows delivers 2.7 million litres to Dairygold. They also finish fifty 20 to 22-month-old beef cattle and about 90 cull cows to Dawn Meats in Charleville each year.
The remaining beef calves are sold mostly to ABP schemes, with some going to the local mart in Kanturk.
In an effort to drive the business forward, the herd is involved in many services, including HerdPlus, the National Genotyping Programme, Gene Ireland and Milk Recording, as well as the Dairy Beef Weighing and Welfare Schemes.
A Compact Spring-Calving System
The herd is run on a compact spring-calving system, with a six-week calving rate of 83% and a calving interval of 364 days. This is achieved with a target level of feeding about 1.5 tonnes of concentrates.
A key focus is getting a lot of grass grazed into the cows alongside some fodder beet that is grown on contract.
The breeding season is all AI for nine weeks, and then Angus bulls mop up for the last four weeks.
Using Gene Ireland to Drive Genetic Gain
A key feature of the breeding season is the fact that the herd uses a significant number of Gene Ireland dairy and beef straws every year. These high-index new sires allow the herd to accelerate the rate of genetic gain as each calf crop comes through.
This has played a key role in driving the herd into the top 12% of herds nationally on EBI. The ranking of the herd for all the key traits in the EBI is displayed in more detail in Table 1 below.
Interestingly, all the maiden heifers are bred to Angus bulls that are produced from their own small herd of pedigree Angus cows. Some sexed semen is also used to reduce the number of dairy males.
The robust herd health programme includes vaccines for IBR, salmonella, scour and pneumonia. This is essential in a herd of this size in an effort to be ahead of problems before they appear.
Table 1. EBI Profile of the Herd
Dairy Beef Genetics and Commercial Beef Value
The use of high Dairy Beef Index (DBI) sires via Gene Ireland ensures the resulting beef calves are high on the Commercial Beef Value (CBV).
With the recent increases in beef prices, these high-index calves now play a significant role in contributing to overall farm sales.
As mentioned earlier, a lot of these calves are purchased by ABP for various schemes, and several have subsequently ended up in the Tully Beef and Dairy Research Centre in Co. Kildare. Here they have performed extremely well in terms of feed efficiency and growth rate.
Investing in the Future
The Shinnicks have availed of the TAMS scheme, and a solar system has been installed in an effort to reduce energy bills.
Looking to the future, there are no major system changes planned. However, they do hope to be able to replace rented land with bought land to reduce exposure to expensive land rental prices if the right opportunity presents itself.
They see major opportunities and benefits in increasingly working in partnership with buyers when selling animals, to be better insulated from unpredictable prices when supply increases.
Focus on Efficiency Rather Than Scale
Donal Shinnick’s recommendation to others is to do what you do well in an efficient manner rather than only focusing on increasing scale.
On the dairy side, aim for a commercial cow delivering over 500kg of solids, with a saleable calf that has the potential to reach a 300kg carcass, be it a steer, heifer or cull cow.
Donal Shinnick would love to see the agri media promote the positive side of being a successful farmer. As an industry, we should be championing the many ways that farming has become more sustainable and the need for food to be produced in this way.
Further information on the Dairy Beef Gene Ireland Programme is available here. The programme focuses on progeny testing beef AI sires with strong performance for traits including carcass weight, conformation and feed intake while maintaining suitability for use in the dairy herd.