MOUNTBELLEW ATU GALWAY-MAYO Top Prize for Champion Beef Cow

ATU Mountbellew, one of Ireland’s leading universities offers undergraduate programmes in AgriBusiness, Agri-Engineering, and Agri-Science. With 169 hectares, students benefit from practical, hands-on experience on our working farm. This gives the students invaluable experience for future career opportunities.

ATU Mountbellew has a cow dairy herd with over 80 pedigree Holstein, and dry stock with 60 cow sucklers, 60-unit calf to beef enterprise, and a sheep flock of 250 ewes. A 4-year-old Limousin cow from ATU’s Mountbellew dry stock unit born and raised on the farm won first prize from the Ballinasloe Mart on the 8th of March 2023.

The Limousin cow won “Champion Beef Cow” in the “Beef Cow Class” for being “top of her class.”

John Hurley, Dry Stock Unit Manager at ATU Mountbellew prepared and looked after the winning cow.

Celebrating the Life and Work of a Trailblazing Veterinarian

The Aleen Cust Centenary Conference celebrated the life and work of the first woman to become a veterinary surgeon in Ireland and the UK. The two-day event in ATU Mountbellew in August 2022, hosted a wide range of lectures, talks and demonstrations. Guests included: Maria Walsh MEP, Professor Siobhan Mullan, Professor Temple Grandin, Natasha Meunier, Donal Connolly, Dr Martina Moloney, Dr Denis G. Marnane and other members of the academic, veterinary and agricultural community.

Aleen Cust was the Veterinary Inspector for Mountbellew district from 1905-1915 and assisted in treating horses during WWI in France. In 1924, she sold her property and moved to England due to strict gender roles after the Irish Rising.

Despite this, Cust remained interested in veterinary work, travelling extensively and visiting schools and abattoirs on behalf of the Royal Society for the Prevention of

Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA). Cust passed away during a visit to Jamaica in 1937. Her grave was unknown until December 2021, when Mountbellew veterinarian Brendan

One, Two, Three, Four!

ATU Mountbellew had an outstanding number of lamb triplets and quadruplets this lambing season!

Over 200 ewes were in the maternity ward this year with a total number of 32 ewes having triplets and one ewe having quadruplets. It was a busy time for the students helping lamb the ewes when onsite for college and giving a helping hand to the farm unit manager, John Hurley.

To ease the pressure off the mother of the ewe with quadruplets, two of the lambs were fed by mother while the other two were fed artificially by 'The Shepherdess'.

The Shepherdess is a unique lamb milk feeder delivering warm, fresh milk to the lambs twenty-four-hours a day. Alongside feeding from the mother this is the best method of artificially feeding and eliminates the need for bottle feeding. It reduces labour for the farmer and will benefit the lambs in future as they will grow faster and leads to an earlier weaning time.

Learn more about our working farm and facilities, visit atu.ie/mountbellew