John O Connell

John O’Connell: John was invited onto the council by John Farrell IGA President for a one-year co-opted term. He is Farming just outside Ballinamore in county Leitrim. His farm consists of 34 hectares of typical Leitrim land in two equal blocks 3 miles apart. He keeps 170 lowland ewes with predominantly Suffolk and Belclare breeding with a few other breeds thrown in to keep it “interesting”. Ewes are housed at Christmas and lambing commences on the 10th of March after which ewes and lambs are turned out to grass. I also run a dairy heifer contract rearing enterprise which consists of 50 calves and 50 1-2 yr olds. Calves arrive at three months of age and are returned to the source farm just prior to calving 20 months later. John has been involved in quite a few projects over the last 15 years with Teagasc, hosting in service training days, workshop groups and open days/discussion groups. John was in the sheep BETTER farm program for 9 years which was an invaluable experience and benefitted him greatly as a farmer. During his time in the program, he won the grassland farmer of the year award in 2019. He has been a benchmark farmer and facilitates level 5 and 6 students on an ongoing basis. He is also involved in the signpost program for the last few years.