Established by Maurice Leahy and his nephew Kevin Leahy in 2006, Leahy Agri Business Ltd provides a complete agricultural contracting service to the farming community of north Co. Kerry. The Leahy’s are also engaged in tillage farming and supply maize to local dairy farmers.
Having previously milked 160 cows, Maurice and Kevin decided 10 years ago to concentrate on agri contracting and growing crops. They are virtually unique in Kerry in that their service encompasses silage, maize, sugar beet and grain harvesting.
“We’re a one-stop shop for all your harvesting needs. There aren’t too many contractors out there who harvest silage, maize, beet and corn. We do everything except for hay baling because it clashes with the silage,” Kevin explains.
Committed to providing a quality service and complete client satisfaction, Leahy Agri Business Ltd also specialises in slurry spreading, spraying, reseeding, fertiliser spreading, dumper and digger hire. The company has a wide range of machinery to carry out your work quickly and efficiently, providing you with value-for-money and an alternative to investing in your own expensive equipment.
The continued growth and success of the business is down to the knowledge, skill and expertise of its staff, as well as the quality of its equipment. The family-run concern delivers the value and quality farmers expect from their agricultural contracting partner.
Maurice and Kevin run a fleet of six tractors, including three John Deere, two New Holland and one Massey Ferguson. They have two John Deere 6620s and a 6920s. The New Hollands are a T7050 and a T6080, while the Massey is a 6490.
In addition, they use a John Deere 7700 for harvesting both maize and grass, and Deutz-Fahr 2780 and New Holland 1550S combine harvesters for grain harvesting.
Other plant / equipment includes a Komatsu WA 320 loader, a John Deere 630 mower-conditioner, a Lely 30-foot rake, three Herron silage trailers and two Kane silage trailers, two 2,000-gallon Star slurry tankers, a Samco 6 Row maize seeder, a six-row Armour beet seeder, a three-metre Amazone one pass, an Amazone sprayer with GPS system, one Kuhn five-furrow reversible plough, one Kverneland four-furrow reversible plough, two Armour beet harvesters one double and one single and a Thyregod beet harvester, which is used in frosty conditions.
“We bought the Thyregod harvester during one of the cold winters we had a few years ago and it has proven to be a great buy. It allows us to harvest beet in all sorts of conditions,” says Kevin.
All machines are upgraded on a regular basis to avoid breakdowns and downtime. Servicing and maintenance is carried out in-house, while mechanic Kevin Lynch is called upon to carry out any repair work.
“Kevin is a local lad who calls in and gets us sorted straight away. We are very lucky to have a mechanic of his calibre living in the area,” the affable contractor continues.
Leahy Agri Business Ltd boasts a large and loyal customer-base within a wide radius of its base in Causeway, Co. Kerry. The company’s beet harvesting services are sought from Askeaton in Co. Limerick to Valentia Island in south-west Kerry. Customers keep coming back to Maurice and Kevin year after year because they know they’ll get a high-quality, reliable, clean and cost-effective service.
The wide range of services offered by the Leahy’s means there is no such thing as a quiet time of the year for them. In the early months, the focus is on slurry spreading and sowing. The silage season, which typically runs from May to September, is a particularly hectic period for the Leahy team who will work around the clock to keep their customers happy. The rest of the year is taken up by grain, maize and beet harvesting.
“When other lads have their machines parked up for the winter, we’re still going strong with the maize and beet harvesting. It keeps us going up until Christmas every year.”
Maurice and Kevin are joined in the day-to-day running of the business by Edmond White and, of course, Maurice’s sister, Ann, who looks after the administration. Ann is the heart of the operation making sure machines are taxed and insured, looking after invoices, sorting and paying the bills and all the important stuff behind-the-scenes that’s needed to keep a business like this running smoothly. They can take on up to nine extra staff at peak times.
In addition to the contracting business, the Leahy’s grow 380 acres of maize, spring barley and sugar beet on their Causeway farm. The farm is divided into two separate blocks, both around 150 acres, while they have a long-term lease on another 80 acres nearby.
The Leahy name is synonymous with maize production and harvesting in Kerry. The maize Maurice and Kevin grow is sold to local dairy farmers. Indeed, they even provide a delivery service.
“It’s all dairy farming in this part of Kerry and we enjoy a very good relationship with all the local farmers. Low milk prices have made things difficult for dairy farmers over the past few months, but hopefully things will improve soon and they can return to profit. If dairying is struggling, it will have a knock-on effect for us, so we need milk prices to improve,” Kevin concludes.
Leahy Agri Business Ltd
Causeway,
Co. Kerry.
Contact Kevin on 087 7837447 or Maurice on 086 6087246
Taken from Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 3 No 10, November 2015
