Curtain comes down on Chessy Suffolk flock after a 46-year connection with the breed

Padraic and Margaret Niland with their grandchild Eva (5) at their farm in Labane, pictured with some of their beautiful Suffolk flock . Photograph: Hany Marzouk.

placeholder image — Padraic and Margaret Niland with their grandchild Eva (5) at their farm in Labane, pictured with some of their beautiful Suffolk flock . Photograph: Hany Marzouk.

ONE of the country’s best known Suffolk breeders is having a final dispersal sale in Athenry Mart on Friday week next, November 9, at 7pm – an event that’s expected to draw a large crowd of sheep farmers.

Padraic Niliand from Chessy, Ardrahan, is recognised across the country as one of Ireland’s top sheep breeders for both Suffolks and Texels, but has now decided ‘to get out’ of the Suffolks.

His decision to part company with the Suffolks is not based on any ‘falling out’ with the breed . . . rather it’s to do with a condition that Padraic describes as ‘TMB’. Padraic lightheartedly defines ‘TMB’ as ‘too many birthdays’, as he scales back his workload, drawing down the curtain on a 46-year involvement with the Suffolk breed.

“I have stayed a long time with this breed (Suffolks) and of course I do think an awful lot of them. But with the years moving on, something has to give,” Padraic told the Farming Tribune.

The Chessy Suffolk flock has left its mark on the breed, not alone in Galway, but all across the country and they also have given great satisfaction to Padraic Niland and his family.

“When you stay this long with a particular breed you must think a lot of them . . . and that I do. Suffolks will be popular long after we’re gone and I hope the people who purchase my sheep will have as much satisfaction and fun as we had,” said Padraic Niland.

His mantra in sheep breeding was always to go for quality when it came to buying rams or ewes, even though he admits that in itself that there are no ‘guarantees’ when it comes to progeny.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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