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NEWS
Ballintoy farm walk planned
By Staff Reporter
THE innovative McHenry family of The Parks Farm, Ballintoy, maintains both profits on their hill unit and a landscape virtually unchanged for over a century.
On Thursday evening, August 20, from 7pm Maurice, who farms in partnership with wife Marie and son Robert, hosts an AgriSearch farm walk open to all interested in upland farming and our environment.
AFBI (Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute) scientists will join Maurice in revealing how research part-funded by lamb producers through AgriSearch helps protect profits and biodiversity.
Signposted off the Ballycastle to Bushmills route, The Parks Farm is part of the Antrim Coast, Glens and Rathlin Environmentally Sensitive Area, ESA. The 120ha, 300 acres, includes only 6ha of improved grassland, but 94ha of moorland, so making a realistic income is challenging.
With some similar upland farms virtually abandoned elsewhere the McHenry family must farm both sheep and the environment profitably.
Thus the emphasis on sheep genetics rather than particular breeds, with their 240 breeding ewes and 46 hoggets no longer all Scottish Blackface. Rather the hoggets, which will increase to over 100 next year, are a variety of crosses used in AgriSearch supported trials examining the role of Blackface, Swaledale, Lleyn, Texel and Highlander genetics.
Full story available in FARM WEEK - see your local newsagent
Click here for previous stories
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August 13th 2009
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August 6th 2009
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