From their base in Eglinton, Londonderry, two generations of the Montgomery family work together to deliver exceptional dairy farming and agricultural contracting services. We crossed the border and caught up with Thomas Montgomery to find out more about this excellent long-standing family business, which also incorporates a recently-installed anaerobic digestion plant, some tillage and a flock of ewes.
The genesis of Montgomery Contracts dates back some three-and-a-half decades, when the Montgomery brothers started providing a silage cutting service using a Ford Force 3000 tractor and 42” JF side-mounted harvester, which was quickly superseded by a Bomford 42” equipped with pick-up hitch.
As demand for work increased from neighbouring farmers, the Ford 3000 was replaced by a Ford 4000, then a Ford 5000, and a carefully-considered investment was also made in a Fiat 880 to complement a New Holland 780 trailed precision chop.
The Montgomery brothers stuck with Fiat until it merged with Ford to form New Holland, which kept them dealing with local main dealer, Cowan Bros. The tractor fleet today is exclusively New Holland and Montgomery Contracts operate an immaculate collection of machinery which enables them to provide unrivalled contracting solutions across Derry and into Donegal.
Donald is joined in the business by four brothers – Stewart, Kenneth, Mark and Stephen – as well as Kenneth’s sons, Thomas and Jonathan. All seven are involved in the contracting business while Donald, Stewart, Kenneth, Thomas and Jonathan run the home dairy farm, with 300 cows, in Eglinton and the two youngest brothers – Mark and Stephen – look after a second farm of some 180 cows, two miles away in Drumahoe.
Regarding the dairy enterprise, Thomas elaborates: “We run two dairy herds, with 480 cows in total, all pedigree Holsteins, all AI’d. We have a 20/40 rapid-exit Gascoigne parlour at home and a 20/40 Westfalia SwingOver on the other farm. Our milk goes to Aurivo and theirs goes to LacPatrick Dairies in Monaghan.
“On the home farm in Eglinton, we milk the cows three times a day, while Mark and Stephen milk twice a day. Both herds start calving in October and finish in February. Between the two farms, we have about 1.100 acres, 500 of which is owned and the rest of which is leased.
“We also grow about 120-130 acres of rye. Around 40 acres of that is kept for the cows and the rest goes into the digester.”
On the contracting front, it would be fair to say that the Montgomery brothers (and sons / nephews) run one of the most impressive fleets in the region. They own and operate eight New Holland tractors, a couple of which are generally replaced each year to keep things as fresh as possible. For example, a brand-new T7.235 was acquired in February for the new season.
They also run three JCBS (320S, 416S and 418S), a Claas 860 self-propelled harvester, three sets of Kuhn mowers (which were also purchased in 2016) and a John Deere push and pull twin mower system in addition to a Claas 2000 rake, three Herron and two Kane silage trailers, two SlurryKat umbilical pipe slurry spreading systems and three SlurryKat tankers (two 3,500 gallons and one 2,750 gallons) plus two 2,000 gallon Redrock tankers alongside an Amazone One Pass drill and two Kverneland ploughs (one five-furrow; one four-furrow reversible).
Needless to say, securing and preserving such a vast fleet requires substantial investment. “We keep it all in great condition,” Thomas confirms. “We try to do as much of the maintenance as we can ourselves and Cowan Bros do all the tractor work.”
Explaining the family’s decision to install an anaerobic digestion plant on their farm, Thomas continues: “We used to grow 120 acres of pruddies every year but there was no margin there anymore so we went with the digester instead. We started working on that four years ago and it’s only in December, 2015 that we finally got her fired up to the grid.”
The digester is run mostly on grass and slurry, consuming some 26 tonnes of grass and four tonnes of whole crop daily as well as 6,000 gallons of slurry, to produce 7,500kw per hour of energy for the Northern Ireland electricity grid.
“The by-product is digestate, which we spread on the land and is very good for growth. The growth rate you get from it is excellent, so it’s a compete circle and nothing is really going to waste.”
Between the dairy farms, contracting and digestion plant, full-time, profitable employment is generated for the seven Montgomery family members alongside another three or four regular seasonal workers between the months of February and October.
Returning to the popular agri contracting services provided, Thomas comments: “Silage and slurry are the two main ones but we also do a fair bit of ploughing, sowing and reseeding. We cover a pretty broad catchment area from Limavady up to Dunamanagh and Crawley, down to Burnfoot across the Donegal border. We get a lot of repeat business. A high percentage of them have been with us since we started and I’ve been dealing with a lot of the same faces since I started working in the business myself.”
The key to the continued success of Montgomery Contracts? “Having good machinery so that you never break down is a must,” says Thomas. “You also need good staff and you have to make sure you do a great job every time. If you do good work, they will always get you back again.”
For good measure, Thomas and Jonathan also run a flock of 80 ewes. More often than not, time is at a premium but they wouldn’t have it any other way!
“The milking on the home farm takes two hours three times a day. We milk at 4:30am, 1:00pm and 8:30pm and we take it in turns so everybody gets a break.
“But, yeah, we are always busy. During the summer, if it rains for two weeks solid and you then get a couple of dry days – as is often the case – you could easily find yourself putting in 18-hour shifts because the work has to be done when that window is opened.
“But we all pull together and get the work done,” Thomas concludes. “In the silage season, my brother-in-law Ally Sayers also gives us a hand with his Claas 870 harvester. We all roll our sleeves up and get over the line.”
This strong work ethic and determination – coupled with a keen personal touch and a commitment to perfection – has seen Montgomery Contracts thrive for almost four decades now and all the signs are encouraging that there is plenty more left in the tank of this superb, multifaceted family enterprise.
Montgomery Contracts,
25 Carmoney Road,
Eglinton,
Londonderry,
BT47 3JJ.
Tel: 048 71810422
Taken from Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 4 No 9, November/December 2016
