Specialising in pit silage and round bales – and a whole lot more besides! – McHugh & Harrington Agri Contractors have been offering exceptional levels of service for more than three decades. We visited their Boyle, County Roscommon base to get an insight into this superb family-run operation from co-founder Roger McHugh and his nephew, Kenneth Harrington.
For more than three decades, farmers in counties Roscommon, Sligo and Leitrim have been benefiting from the contracting excellence of McHugh & Harrington Agri Contractors, a family-owned and –operated enterprise fronted by uncle and nephew team Roger McHugh and Johnny and Enda Harrington.
The business was established by Roger alongside his brothers-in-law Johnny (Kenneth’s dad) and Enda Harrington back in 1983 and has during the intervening years developed a wonderful reputation for providing professional, prompt and affordable solutions across a range of contracting services.
“We started off cutting silage with a double-chop harvester, working locally for the first couple of years,” says Roger, reflecting on the genesis and early days of the business. “We started doing the baling around 1985 when that came in and started into the slurry work around about the same time.”
Forging strong relationships and a large degree of trust with local families over the years and decades, McHugh & Harrington Agri Contractors combine a magnificent fleet of fresh and immaculately-maintained tractors and machinery with unrivalled experience and expertise to deliver outstanding pit silage and round baling services on farms within a 20-mile radius of their Kingsland, Boyle location, close to the Sligo border.
Regarding the reasons for the popularity of the services provided, Kenneth believes punctuality, dependability and quality workmanship have served McHugh & Harrington Agri Contractors well. “Being on time and doing good work are very important qualities,” he states. “We always do our best and customers tend to appreciate that.
“It’s been a very bad summer, weather-wise, however, and that brings its own pressures. All you really need is two or three days at a time to get the work done but it’s been poor weather and the volume of work has been down about 33% from last year, although there’s still a bit of time left to make up some ground.”
At the heart of the operation is a superb fleet of tractors and machinery, including 13 tractors – a mix of New Holland, Case and Landini, the newest of which is a 131-reg Case Puma. These are complemented by a couple of McHale Balers (an F5500 and an F550) and a McHale Fusion 3 integrated baler wrapper, which was purchased brand new this year.
Other key items in the hard-working, versatile fleet include a Fella rake, two John Deere mowers, a John Deere 7550 self-propelled silage harvester (bought new in 2012), Kane and Smyth trailers, 414S JCB loading shovel,, four Hi-Spec slurry tankers (one brand-new, with a dribble bar), one Cross muck spreader, two Bredal lime spreaders and a Spreadwise umbilical system, which has been up and running for 20 years already.
They also cut some turf and run two Difco hoppers and one self-propelled track hopper.
Needless to say, all the gear is kept in tip-top condition to guarantee optimal performance. Roger, Johnny and Enda oversee a lot of maintenance and servicing work themselves, while they also use Mike Geraghy in Birr to look after the Case and New Holland tractors.
Running such an impressive fleet obviously comes at a cost and money is constantly being reinvested back into the business. “You’d have no bother spending a few pound,” says Kenneth. “Indeed, you really have to be prepared to spend it with the way the weather is going because you are so pressed for time that you have to be able to make 1,000 bales a day and cut 90-100 acres of silage in a day. It’s such a rush now that you need the best equipment that money can buy.”
Today, there are four members of the McHugh / Harrington family working full-time in the business – Roger, Enda and Johnny as well as Johnny’s son John. Kenneth is employed part time during the summer and casual employment is also generated for a number of other local men when things get particularly busy.
Like all contractors worth their salt, the lads are all from farming backgrounds themselves and continue to run their own suckler enterprises to complement the contracting work – Johnny and Enda have 70 sucklers and Roger also has some sucklers as well as 20 pedigree Charolais.
Going forward, there will be no radical changes to the tried and trusted McHugh & Harrington Agri Contractors business model. They’re going to stick to what they know best and continue to offer customers the superb level of service that they have come to expect:
“We’ll keep doing what we are doing and try to keep things going,” says Kenneth. “Farmers are struggling a bit and I’d say it’s the weather that’s hitting them more so than the prices. It’s the weather that’s killing them – the last two years have been very bad here. But we’ll keep it going and hopefully it’ll improve.
“We’re always busy when the weather is good and I’ve never seen us run out of work. There’s always something to be doing when we have the weather on our side. But we could all be doing with a bit of a break from the bad weather.”
As a family business, McHugh & Harrington Agri Contractors pride themselves on providing a personal touch. “The vast majority of it is repeat work, mostly with families we’ve been working with for many years, but you’d always pick up the odd new lad along the way, too,” Kenneth concludes.
McHugh & Harrington Agri
Contractors,
Kingsland,
Boyle,
County Roscommon.
Tel: 086 8288739 / 087 9499225
Taken from Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 4 No 7, September 2016
