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00:00reminder from this summer on a glorious day for harvesting this year has kind of
00:04been perfect like we had rain when we needed it and we've got sunshine when
00:07we need it as well Ella is on the trail of one of Ireland's most deadly invasive
00:11species lurg mink so you just have to go quite a pace to keep up with them and
00:16Dara spends a day with an alpaca farmer and county Wicklow good girl oh
00:30it's the end of July on one of the hottest days of the year and the Hobson
00:47farm in Warrenstown in County Meath is gearing up for the start of the harvest
00:51season four generations of the family have made their livelihood growing crops
00:56David good morning good morning how are you not too bad David Hobson runs this
01:01large-scale operation with his brother Robert and his dad John real busy time
01:06of year for you real busy time of year for us and the busiest periods about to
01:10start in the next two or three weeks as well as growing wheat barley oats oilseed
01:15grape and other crops on around 1800 acres the Hobsons also have a green drying and
01:21storage business but before the harvesting can happen a cleanup operation
01:27has to be carried out on the combine in scorching weather like this fires are an
01:32all-too-real risk so that this is the dusty chaffy material that could
01:38potentially catch fire yeah it's getting very dry it wouldn't take a whole lot to
01:41catch spark your working machines are very high hydraulic pressures you know
01:45their big engine and any small thing can can go wrong so we just have to be
01:49very vigilant in this sort of weather a 30 acre field of winter barley is first on
01:54the list for harvest all the signs are that they have caught it in peak
01:58condition you can hear the crackle in the crop as well that's how you know it's
02:04nearly ready yeah notes really ready grains are rock hard the boys and yeah
02:10looks good to go we have such a small narrow window here in Ireland when the crop
02:15comes ripe you really have like a week before you start losing heads and that's
02:20your yield dropping so every head that you lose I mean that's that's money gone
02:25yeah absolutely we had a few difficult years 23 and 24 the weather was very
02:31extreme with to know endless rain this year has kind of been perfect for us to
02:37get you know decent crops like we had rain when we needed it and we got sunshine when
02:40we needed as well so things looking good I can see a smile on your face so I can
02:45yeah before the combine can be let loose the moisture content of the green must be
02:51analyzed once the reading is anywhere between 15 and 20% you're generally good
02:57to go give it a good rub around Jesus Troy isn't it it's fantastic sodas yeah so power it up
03:09here we go 15.4 good enough for harvest and yeah oh yeah yeah because the next in
03:19the next hour it's going to be below that and it could get too dry so we get going now
03:29David studied at University College Dublin completing a PhD in crop and soil health he
03:37then worked for two years in the green buying sector before making the decision to come home
03:42to Warrenstown we always knew that you know for us to be able to work the thing well and to be able
03:47to expand and to grow our business we would have to be here it's a team really no more gallivanting
03:53around time to come home and get to work no more gallivanting around yeah trying to get home and get to
03:58work yet but working on this farm is a little different to most something that David believes has positively
04:06shaped his approach to the business and life I grew up with deaf parents you don't really think
04:14of it because you're growing up with it but we struggled a lot like we a lot of challenges growing
04:18up communication was always a difficult thing miscommunication we always had to step in whenever
04:25there was a problem legal stuff taxation everything you can think of always involved myself or one of my
04:33siblings but we afforded a very good life they couldn't have done more for us as kids like we
04:41had a really good childhood we always wanted to do our best for our parents like because they did so
04:46well for us what's your dad's situation it's almost thrusted you into a management position a lot
04:53earlier than a lot of other young farmers of your age yeah I'd say that is probably one of the
04:59advantages is when things aren't working you know they're not working at an early age trying to
05:04figure out how why things are the way they are question them and change them and seeing what works best for
05:11us despite the fact that 2025 has been a bumper year for grain growers overall the tillage sector is not in a
05:19good place the barley being harvested here today like nearly all grain grown in Ireland is destined for animal feed
05:27but prices continue to come under extreme pressure from cheap imports of feedstock from outside the EU
05:34commodities they're difficult like and the sector is in a difficult place a precarious place we can't keep just
05:42growing feed materials with no added value I think the future has to be where we look to add value to what we're
05:49growing here the Hobsons started their green drying and storage venture in 2017 every year they dry about
05:5820,000 tons of crops their own but also those of other farmers it means increased revenue for the business
06:06it's definitely giving us a little bit more flexibility in terms of selling power also comfort
06:11like we know when we want to sell it's opened a few more doors I suppose with adding value to other markets
06:17yeah it's definitely helped us a lot in the last few years while the barley moisture reading taken in the
06:24field gives a good approximation a more accurate test is vital to determine exactly how much drying time will
06:31be required and the lower the moisture it is the less you have to dry it yes exactly so the harvest
06:38conditions right now that's doing the drying for us it's a rare enough event in Ireland we usually
06:42have very wet harvests the longer the hot spell continues the moistures are going to continue
06:47to drop and I suppose the other side of the story is farmers don't want to be bringing in 12% barley
06:52because the weight loss can be significant across the field so there's a real sweet spot and right
06:59now we're in that sweet spot here the barley is coming in at exactly the right quality right moisture that
07:05we wanted that the barley harvested this morning can now go to be dried it's an energy hungry process but
07:14after all that welcome sunshine it will take less time meaning a valuable saving and in this sector
07:22particularly at the moment that's welcome it's a very competitive industry we're in Joe the heartland here
07:30of grain growing so we're just trying to hold our own in a year like this you can have potentially five ton an acre of
07:38wheat over two ton an acre of old seed grade four ton an acre of barley and like we really need to be
07:44producing those yields to stay viable because our grain prices are just so volatile and having a facility like
07:50this basically it's like a hedge in effect we're hedging against the volatility by having a facility like this
07:54that's it for part one coming up after the break ella is on the trail of one of ireland's most deadly
08:05invasive species we'll put the cover on to the trap just just to calm the mink and dara spends a day
08:10with an alpaca farmer in county with an alpaca farmer in county wicklow
08:12whether plant or animal invasive species can put huge pressure on our native wildlife
08:28one of the most troublesome is the american mink since escaping from fur farms back in the 1950s
08:36mink have spread right across the country this morning i'm by the shores of loch rea in west
08:44meath to meet owen murphy and mark craven who are involved in a new project the midlands mink
08:51eradication program we have a series of traps uh out around the countryside trying to catch mink and
08:57they're all censored so we know immediately as soon as they close so one of them at this location has gone
09:02off last night so we're going to go down and check it and mark your job is to as they say dispatch if
09:08it is a mink dispatch the mink which means you're going to kill the mink that's right yeah it's a
09:11live catch trap and we have to attend to it straight away and remove the mink and dispatch it humanely
09:16mink are a major threat to ireland's ground nesting birds taking not only the eggs but often the adult
09:24birds as well this eu-funded pilot project brings together the breeding waders european innovation
09:31partnership and the national association of regional game councils with support from the national parks
09:37and wildlife service and i suppose mink watery animal that you're semi-aquatic so they're they spend
09:44all their lives really somewhere around water courses the project spans more than two and a half
09:50thousand square kilometers an area that includes some of ireland's most important breeding grounds
09:56for waders like the curlew and the snipe 600 sensor equipped traps will be placed in spots where mink
10:06activity is suspected i can see the little sensor on the front there so that is what is communicating
10:12with your phone yeah so this is our trap ah yeah um so when we press on the trap uh it'll tell us
10:19where it is when it's gone off so there's something in there because i can see there's
10:23something in there you've got a safe um what happens next what we do is we will cover the trap over
10:29to reduce stress levels on the mink we will remove the sensor and we'll bring away the mink to dispatch
10:33somewhere safe okay we have a mink mark is an experienced gun club member and he's taken part in mink
10:42control work before so he knows these animals very well this project is the largest of its kind ever
10:51undertaken in ireland and it will depend heavily on community involvement both in reporting mink sightings
10:57and dealing with the captured animals we'll put the cover onto the trap just just to calm the mink and
11:03you heard the high pitch screech that's that's a defense mechanism when somebody gets close to it
11:09dan curly is chairperson of the national association of regional game councils we have been involved in
11:16mink control for probably 40 years at this stage and part of conservation is trying getting birds to
11:21breed as successfully as possible and the mink is a huge impediment to that the damage is done around
11:27the breeding cycle when they're nesting you know and if a bird is put off our nest or the eggs taken that
11:32bird is barren for that year almost certainly you know and that's a cycle gone and some of them are
11:36quite short-lived birds so they have to breed fairly regularly to keep the keep the numbers anywhere
11:41right you know we're moving the mink to a secure semi-enclosed area so that mark can dispose of it
11:54this is not pretty work but it is vital if the project is to succeed
11:59many of the birds that nest on the ground here are red listed and their populations are in severe
12:07decline a recent report shows that they're 15 times more likely to be in decline than other european bird
12:15species we have choices do we want ground nesting birds in some areas that we can control populations of
12:26predators such as mink or do we want predators everywhere and no ground listing birds and
12:30they're the hard decisions that we need to make because we know our land use has changed so much
12:35over the last 50 to 60 years that these birds are doing really really badly owen is a wildlife
12:42management specialist and the driving force behind this project he's bringing me to another location where
12:49mink have been seen karaki nocton bog and this time we're joined by another member of the team
12:56essential to this job is what's in the back of your car yeah this is uh this is lorg so lorg is a
13:02conservation detection dog um he's a labrador uh retriever and he's been trained to detect mink
13:09when you're working in large wide open landscapes very very hard for a human to know if there are mink
13:14there isn't there a mink yeah so to be able to focus where we put down our trap so our trap is in
13:18the best possible location to catch a mink uh this lad's nose is what it's all about also with us
13:24our project data analyst elena bakura and a new volunteer daniel connell hi daniel how are you
13:31so daniel has started yesterday and will be working setting some traps or checking some traps for us
13:35so we'll be joined by mark who will do that and we have elena here who will go through the mapping and
13:39the data collection aspect of it the data collection is everything well it's hugely important i mean if you put
13:43down a trap and then you don't know where it is and you don't know whether it was rebated all these
13:46things you know the whole program would quickly fall asunder so the data collection is massively
13:50important now it is lurks turn to get to work lurk mink so you just have to go quite a pace to keep
14:00up with them lurk is searching an area where owen has received a report of a sighting
14:13and if we look at here we can see the mink scat oh my lord that's a very very hard thing to find for
14:28me walking by and that's the road actually the little laneway just here that we got the report
14:32so our our citizen science information was bang on mark elena and daniel are on hand to set up the
14:40trap there's a locking system on this trap a double door this three and a half year project is just
14:46getting started a crucial part of its success will be attracting more volunteers like daniel
14:53and encouraging members of the public to report any mink sightings
14:58in college i studied a lot about invasive species many different ones in ireland and learned a lot
15:04about american mink and how detrimental they are to irish breeding water birds and wintering water
15:10birds so i just kind of wanted to do my best if we look at europe i can't think of any other eu country
15:17that you could eradicate mink from and say well they are now eradicated because if you eradicate them from
15:22france they come in from italy or they come in from spain so ireland as an island nation and it would have
15:27to be an all-island effort but technically we could it would be a really really sizable amount of work
15:33and would take resource but if we can get the the voluntary and citizen science model it reduces the
15:39cost hugely so then it is something that possibly is achievable into the future
15:49a lot of people dream of starting a new life doing something completely different
15:54but most of us never actually manage it because it does require a huge leap of faith that can be
16:00terrifying but it's that terror mixed with excitement that inspires others like the farmer i'm about to
16:08meet here in wicklow this morning joe phelan is still something of a rarity in ireland an alpaca farmer
16:16hey joe hello jara you're very welcome he keeps a herd of 80 animals on 90 acres of land in callow hill
16:23near newtown mount kennedy hi guys janet herman has worked here for the last five years while emily norell
16:31a veterinary student is just helping out for the summer now jara before we go in here we have to dip our
16:36feet this is a biosecurity on the farm okay every time we go in and out of any field we have to dip
16:41our feet keeping the animals healthy is paramount on this farm but these peruvian natives are actually
16:47very hardy the first year i came here i was busy put gelters in around the place and i deliberately
16:53went out in the first storm to see where to use them not a single one was being used they prefer to
16:58be out in the open originally from kerry joe spent most of his life in dublin a father of four he worked
17:06for nearly 40 years in the banking sector for me the turning point really would have been back around
17:122014 you know because at that stage three of my kids left home at the one time and it kind of was
17:17like a trigger it kind of switched my thinking and i had this idea that i didn't want to retire and then
17:22i started thinking well what would i really like you know i like the outdoors i always had this desire
17:28to set up my own business but wasn't brave enough but joe did take the leap in 2016.
17:35he initially invested in eight prize-winning females for breeding which he sourced in the uk
17:42he now has over 80 animals here this is what we call our kind of maternity group now so you'll
17:48see there's lots of adults and then lots of babies so there's eight crea in here so a baby alpaca is
17:53called a crea there are two different types of alpacas if you look at daydream here she has
17:58long soft and dreadlock type fiber and she's a suri alpaca and the rest of the guys are all wakias
18:04big fluffy teddy bear like alpacas the difference between the two is that daydream gets away with a
18:09haircut every two years the others have to be shorn every year the sale of this fiber is just one of the
18:16the farm's income streams as well as welcoming day trippers visitors can stay in renovated farm
18:22buildings and go on treks with the animals there's also a gift shop stocked with all things alpaca
18:30joe did over two years of research before embarking on this venture but no amount of research could
18:36prepare him for every aspect of rearing alpacas the adjustment was quite big and even still is because
18:44i don't have a farming background really i have experience on a farm for when i was small so
18:49this is still a steep learning curve you know i'm trying to see how do i make the farm work and earn
18:55its keep come on little one while alpacas are relatively easy to care for they do have some special
19:02needs vitamin d injections are required every couple of months during the winter to make up for the lack
19:09of sunshine here today one of the herd needs eye drops to treat an infection administering them
19:18doesn't come without risk what i'm looking at is her gob oh yeah no yeah yeah you have to watch that
19:24that's why i'm holding her but i'm not really holding her but see yeah yeah yeah so she's a bit
19:28like mad oh which way i'm going to turn it this way because the wind the wind is going this way good
19:32girl classic oh there you go good girl oh well done so we're just popping that that ointment into
19:41inside her eye yeah well done oh well done good girl oh but a far more serious disease has had a deadly
19:53impact on joe's farm bovine tuberculosis in 2020 17 infected animals had to be put down after
20:01contracting tb in 2022 the disease struck again even now talking it kind of makes me feel a bit sick to
20:10the stomach we lost three generations of studs it destroyed our breeding aspect of our business
20:17um let's say nearly destroyed your appetite for running it it did for a while and you know i just
20:26felt like walking away and selling the farm you know the breeding was to be a third of my business
20:32and i don't breed now anymore so i only breed for myself in the irish market some of these studs would
20:39have been worth 15 000 for example you know so really valuable animals 33 animals had to be destroyed
20:46as a result of the second infection it was extremely difficult i i have no problem saying those tears
20:52in my eyes you know putting someone you know down was really difficult but despite these tough setbacks
20:58joe has managed to grow his business the farm now has a turnover of roughly half a million euro a year
21:06now uh uh leo you're not coming good boy the loss of his breeding business led joe to expand the
21:12agri-tourism aspect he brings the alpacas to wedding parties to schools and also provides them as
21:19therapeutic animals today joe is making one of his regular visits to kilkul lodge nursing home his two
21:27alpacas paddy and oscar are also regulars here and so are well used to all the attention now hello guys
21:36how are we if we try to rub them on the neck they prefer a rub on the neck oh that's it well done
21:43guys well done the alpacas are really really calm they're really chilled animals yeah the lambs are
21:49much bigger up here you know uh whereas the alpacas they're not much bigger than this
21:53it's not that often you'd have visitors like that here no no but it's great for them
22:02children children our little granddaughters love and i always bring two because one keeps the other
22:09comforts you know rather than one what did you make of them oh yeah they're nice now and they're
22:15shared yeah you know yeah they're very friendly as well aren't they they're very friendly yeah yeah
22:21so they're really good aren't they oh gee there's only one resident left to visit but she's on the
22:29second floor that's no bother to paddy and oscar that's what you call arriving in style isn't it
22:37for joe this is one of the most rewarding aspects of his business and despite the oftentimes difficult
22:43journey that he's been on he's still very glad that he took the plunge i remember being at a business
22:49network meeting and you know telling people who i was doing i could hear people behind me laughing at
22:54me you know they thought it was such a ridiculous idea but i've proven to everybody including myself
22:59that you can create a viable uh sustainable business out of alpacas
23:08that's it for this week's episode next week on the program tackling rural crime bringing dogs in that
23:14are trained to kill into a field full of pregnant sheep is a recipe for disaster macro stocks and
23:21fishermen in crisis i've already taken a 60 70 percent cause in the past 10 years and now you want to
23:27cut me another 70 percent will be left with little or nothing and artificial intelligence transforming
23:33farming should be 115 days ago there it is now on the screen 115.2 days don't forget that this program
23:42will be repeated on sunday at lunchtime after the farming weather you can contact us on facebook and
23:48follow us on x and you can hear more farming stories on countrywide this saturday morning on rte radio one
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