Data driven sheep farming in Westmeath

Westmeath is not considered the heartland of Ireland’s sheep industry, but one Tyrrellspass farmer is hoping to shake that perception.

Most people will automatically think of spring lambs when the ovine part of Ireland’s agriculture output is considered. That is no surprise as spring lambs routinely fetch over €10 per kg.

Globally Ireland is a top four sheep meat exporter, shipping over 80% of its product to premium markets like France and the UK.

Teagasc say the Irish sheep sector is showing healthy resilience in 2026, serving as one of the few agricultural sectors projecting income growth.

The challenges faced by farmers of the fluffy flocks are ubiquitous in agriculture. The long-term vulnerabilities are ones familiar to farm page readers. Issues like generational renewal, upland management, and the high proportion of sheep farmers relying on off-farm employment are all highlighted in the Teagasc Sheep Road Map 2030.

A medium-sized farm is generally defined as one operating between 30 to 50 hectares, that’s roughly 74 to 124 acres. Sheep farms tend not to have a typical footprint.

Maurice Fitzgerald of Mountrath, just past Tyrrellspass, is farming under the lee of Croghan Hill. The imaginary dotted line that separates Westmeath from Offaly is not too far off. The yellow gorse bushes bloom across the May landscape as the green of spring starts to develop a lushness.

“I run a sheep system,” he says at his kitchen table. It’s an unusual way to describe a farm. System is a word at odds with “tradition” or “homestead”. It’s the first indication that if there is a box of farm thinking, then Maurice is outside it.

There are over 36,000 active sheep farms in Ireland accounting for 2.7m breeding ewes. The sheep population in Ireland is 4m with an average flock size of 111 sheep. The Irish counties with the most sheep are Donegal, Galway and Mayo, with almost half a million each, followed closely by Kerry and then Wicklow.

The midland counties are conspicuous in their absence from the top tier. All those counties have a common feature: mountains. So what is going on in Mountrath?

“I’ve an 80 ewe flock. I set up six years ago going into sheep with no experience,” Maurice says.

It’s an odd one to take on. Lamb mortality rates in Ireland generally average between 7% and 15%. While lowland flocks average a mortality rate of around 8%, hill flocks can reach up to 25% due to harsh conditions. Taking on this type of enterprise, particularly without experience, is not without risk.

“My research led me to believe that there was a market for high quality replacements for sale. My aim is to build a name selling high quality hoggets off-farm as breeding replacements for above market value,” and with that one statement the Westmeath farmer hints at the reason there’s a journalist in his kitchen.

In a while he will start to talk about data. Data is rapidly becoming the backbone of modern Irish farming, essential for driving profitability, maintaining a competitive edge in global markets, and meeting strict EU environmental regulations. After that he will touch on being a content creator. But first comes the decision to be a sheep farmer on the pasture land of the midlands famous for their cattle.

“We never had sheep. I had no experience with sheep whatsoever. I took over the farm in 2020. We weren’t set up for cattle. It would have taken a big investment. I said ‘right we’ll look into this, there has to be other options out there’ rather than immersing myself in debt straight away.”

There is no such thing as low cost farming. Setting aside the value of time, the cost of land, equipment, inputs, fuel, fertiliser; everything to do with farming is pricey. That said, sheep are one of the lower cost acquisitions.

“You need a low level of investment at the start,” Maurice said. “The biggest investment is fencing. I invested heavily in fencing the first two years and kind of grew it then.

“I saw the gap in the market for breeding high quality replacements and an opportunity to capitalise on that.”

Farming is still a tactile experience. No matter how much the digital world encroaches on green fields, a farmer will still have to be connected to his land. That said, data is influencing the decision process of many young farmers.

“I looked into where others were buying sheep. Watching online markets for a while to see what price they were making. There’s a different time of year that fellas would be buying breeding replacements.

“Typically that’s around June, July, August, September. I just asked other farmers and got advice from a few I consider really top quality sheep farmers around the area as well,” he says.

His farm is 64 acres. At present 75% is leased out: “I’m farming around 15 acres at the minute. We are phasing the land on lease back into the holding over the next couple of years as I grow numbers.”

The sheep on those 15 acres can be seen through the kitchen window. In front of the house is a paddock with hand reared lambs. They are part of the management system, part based on his online research, part based on conversations with farmers he respects.

That information forms his annual programme: “The ewes come off the farm on the 1 of December and I’ve access to another farm for winter grazing. I bring them back down about two weeks before they start lambing in March.

“I lamb outdoors. The only hay I need is if I have a couple of ewes inside, if there’s bad weather. I will give them a couple of square bales, but 15 square bales does me in the year.

“I buy a bit of straw then for bedding and more for the pet lambs or bedding pens.”

Anyone who spends time at marts will know that the majority of Irish farm households rely on off-farm income. According to the most recent Teagasc National Farm Survey, about 60% of farm households have an off-farm employment income.

Both Maurice and his wife, Clare, are familiar with digital technology in their off farm working lives: “I was working in sales since 2007.

“Along with a friend of mine we set up an online directory for the motor industry, with advertising space. I was offered another job on the back of selling advertising for another company.

“It was all going digitally then at the time. I suppose it just developed from there.”

Marrying a job in digital sales with farming may seem at odds with tradition, but the Mountrath farmer believes they complement each other: “They do now. Years ago no one was digitally savvy, there wasn’t as much emphasis on data as there is now. For me you can’t have enough data on what you’re doing, how you’re doing it, and what you’re producing.

“Data is my unique selling point.”

The tools to harvest that data are part of everyday farming life: “I’m doing things a lot different to most commercial farmers. I tag lambs when they’re two days old. You don’t have to tag sheep until they’re 12 months old, or leave the farm before 12 months. So many farmers tag them the morning they’re selling, you’ll even see them tagging them in the mart.”

“Tagging them at two days old allows me to track that lamb’s performance until either A, if they’re a male they get fattened up for sale to go into the food chain, or B, if they’re being retained as breeding hoggets, or C, if they’re being sold as breeding hoggets.”

The trick is to keep on top of the numbers: “I can monitor their mother’s performance as well. So I can tell if she’s an efficient ewe or not. So say for example, if she’s an 80 kilo ewe and rearing two lambs that are rearing 45 kilo each at point of sale, she’s 110% efficient.

“Whereas if she’s rearing one lamb and he’s 35 kilos at 100 days, then she’s not pulling her weight, basically.”

Tracking the figures is also evolving: “It started out as pen and paper,” Maurice says. “I weigh lambs when they’re two days old. When I’m in the lambing shed, I have a whiteboard and I record all the traits I want.

“I mark them one to five and write down comments.

“I used to transcribe that to a diary every couple of nights when the board was full. But in the last two years, I’ve invested in the EID reader.”

Another branch of the Fitzgerald enterprise is that of a content creator. A 22-second clip on his Irish Prairie Instagram of an “amazing life hack” has amassed 12.1 million views on social media.

“I set up Facebook and Instagram about four years ago to take pictures to sell the stock I was breeding. It was basically to save money, rather than going from marts and having farmers or factory buyers telling me what they’re going to give me for my product.

“I just put up the odd posts, day to day on the sheep farm. I think I had maybe three or four hundred followers.

“I thought it was doing grand, going along nicely. I’d get the odd message or comment about how well they’re looking.

“I put up the video of moving the sheep one morning and threw it up before I went to work.

“It was a rotational grazing system to be moved every three days, using a plastic pipe.

“It went mad overnight. I started getting messages then from lads all over the country, the UK, the US and New Zealand.”

The success of that social media hit has not distracted Maurice from what his business is.

He may have become one of Ireland’s farmer content creators, or “farmfluencer”, but it will not distract him from developing his unique sheep farm enterprise.