Over the past 16 years, Colin Ramsey Agricultural Contracting in Co Derry has been providing a first class service for its customers all around the Coleraine area and beyond. The man himself was good enough to take time out of his busy schedule during silage season to tell us more.
During the initial years of his agricultural contracting set-up, summer was very much where it was at for Co Derry native Colin Ramsey.
Having started up his business venture around the turn of the millennium, silage cutting, mowing and baling were very much the core of the business – and still are today – but, as he goes on to explain, his venture has now evolved into offering its clientele the complete package when it comes to agri contracting.
To say that Colin loves what he does would be somewhat of an understatement. A cattle farmer with some 150 acres, he’s very much in the same shoes as many of his clients and being able to identify with so many of the is perhaps one of the main reasons why they continue to seek his services year in, year out.
The man himself gave us the lowdown on the business that is now going strong 16 years (and counting).
“We’re based at 40 Ballylintagh Road, Aghadowey, Coleraine, Co Derry and we’d have started up around 2000,” explained Colin. “There’s one full-time staff member here who is very very highly thought of, hard-working and committed.
“Silage is the main thing that we do here and we’d do a lot of mowing and baling as well. We work with small community farmers and don’t go too far outside of the county; we also do some slurry work with tankers, sub-soiling and digger work then in the winter as well.”
The digger work is a new aspect of the business which has yet to take off full for Colin, while still adding to his repertoire of services.
He admits himself that the going has been slow thus far but having invested in a New Holland 8-tonne track digger to carry out the work, he’s clearly optimistic that next winter will see things pick up on that end.
“We only got into digger work in the last 12 months and it has been tough enough going,” Colin outlined.
“We haven’t promoted it that much though and the last couple of weeks we’ve been flat out with silage do we haven’t been concentrating on much else. The work we’ve done so far has been for some local farmers with our 8-tonne New Holland track digger, which we bought last year.”
When we spoke to Colin (in July) he was in the thick of it with silage work and, as one could imagine, his digger was the last thing he had on his mind as the push was on to get the cutting done whilst the sun was still shining.
Overall, he says he can have no complaints with the way business is going for him right now.
“It’s doing ok. It’s holding its own now at the moment,” he said. “We’ve stuck with the small farmer and I think that’s kept a lot of our customers loyal to us over the last 16 years.
“We are very reliable – when we say we’ll be there, we’ll be there. We get the job done right and in this business you have to do the job right or your customers won’t come back to you again the following year.”
With milk prices the way they are at the moment, many of Colin’s customers are struggling to make ends meet and he tries to accommodate them in whatever way he can.
“The milk end of it is noticeably bad right now. It’s tough because we are in the milking business too but we just have to get on with it,” he stated.
“We were milking 100 cows at one point but now it’s down to 40, so it’s definitely tough.
“We bought another mower this year and we’re able to rent it out to customers as well. We’ve always pushed the agri contracting end of the business and each year we’ve been taking on more and more, so we’re really concentrating on it this time of year.
“About 80 per cent of our customers would be within a seven-mile radius of where we are here and I think the difference is we work with our customers and a lot of other contractors provide an all or nothing service, where as we are a lot more flexible.”
As for the machinery that Colin is operating with in Aghadowey, it seems that he doesn’t spare any expense having purchased three new mowers this year.
“We’ve six tractors – two Fendts, two New Hollands and two Deutzs – I’m not particularly loyal when it comes to brands but I find New Holland a good tractor,” he outlined.
“We’ve three new Vicon mowers as well and I find them very good, in fact they are one of the best mowers that I’ve used to date. I also have Vicon and Claas rakes and one of them I’d be hiring out to a customer as well as three Pottinger wagons. Our whole business here is based around wagons.
“We do a lot of fertaliser sowing as well around Donegal and Magherafelt, a couple of weeks ago we were working in Strabane.”
It seems getting around for additional work has been a growing trend for Colin as of late and it could be more of the same in the coming months should customers need some digger work done.
“We’ve been getting more and more winter work now in the last couple of years and hopefully the that will keep up and I’d just like to thank all of our customers for their loyalty and for sticking by me over the years,” he said.
“It hasn’t been a great season this summer with the weather but we’d a busy week there when the weather was good. The second cut is much easier, as you can imagine, and the first is always bedlam.”
We can well imagine.
Colin Ramsey Agricultural Contracting
Address:
40 Ballylintagh Road,
Aghadowey,
Coleraine, Co Derry
Tel: 0044 7718925 604
Taken from Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 4 No 7, September 2016
Colin Ramsey Agricultural Contracting
