Celebrating 10 years in business, Tullyallen Agri Services in Co. Louth is a one-stop shop for all your agri contracting, servicing, repairs and reconditioned trailer / slurry tanker needs.
Fronted by Gordon and Stephen Healy, Tullyallen Agri Services provides a complete agri contracting service which includes silage and whop crop cutting, slurry spreading, ploughing, sowing, dung spreading, hedge cutting, excavation and dump trailer work. The brothers learned nearly everything they know about contracting from their late father Gerry, a native of Dunderry, Co. Meath who had been in the business for most of his working life.
Gerry, who passed away in June 2019, was deeply involved in the Tullyallen Tractor Run which has raised over €100,000 for charities close to the hearts of the people of Louth and Meath, including the oncology unit at Our Lady’s Hospital in Drogheda and local charity, the Tullyallen Carers. The most recent Tractor Run, which took place on December 27, 2019 (the event was cancelled in 2020 due to COVID-19), was held in memory of Gerry, who was an original founder of the event.
“It was the biggest and best one yet,” Gordon Healy enthuses.
“My father and Derek Russell, who is a well-known cattle breeder, started the Tullyallen Tractor Run in 2015 and it has grown every year since. Unfortunately, it couldn’t take place in 2020 because of COVID, but we hope it will return in 2021.”
Committed to delivering a top-class service and complete customer satisfaction, Tullyallen Agri Services 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 company’s growth and success can be attributed to the knowledge, skill and experience of its staff as well as the quality of its machinery. The Tullyallen Agri Services team delivers the value and quality farmers expect from their agricultural contracting partner.
The Healy’s have assembled an impressive and modern fleet of tractors and machinery to cater for most jobs. They run five Massey Ferguson tractors, two of which were purchased new from Martin’s Garage in Bailieborough last year. They have two 77205s, two 7726s and a 7715S with loader.
“We’re big Massey Ferguson people and brought a new 77205 and 7726 last year. Massey are hard to beat when it comes to reliability, comfort and fuel efficiency. We try to keep our tractors as fresh as possible. The oldest tractor we have is an 18-reg,” Gordon explains.
Tullyallen Agri Services cuts over 5,000 acres of pit silage a year using a set of Krone and Kverneland butterfly mowers. The silage is picked up by a CLAAS 970 self-propelled harvester and is brought back to the pit by three Broughan trailers and a single Eureka trailer. Other grass equipment includes a JCB 735 loading shovel, a Pottinger forage wagon, a 50ft Krone rake and a 45ft Krone tedder.
Another new piece of kit is a Newrock 4,000-gallon slurry tanker. The brothers also run two 2,600-gallon Ruscon slurry tankers, a 2,700-gallon Conor tanker, a 2,000-gallon Major tanker, a Newrock slurry agitator and a SlurryKat umbilical system which has 1,400 metres of piping. In addition, they have a NC dung spreader, Gregoire Besson and Kverneland ploughs (both five-furrow reversible), a three-metre Sulky One-Pass drill sower, a two-and-a-half-tonne Bogballe fertiliser spreader, a 14-tonne Doosan track machine, a Samco maize sower, a selection of dump trailers and a new Spearhead hedge-cutter which came from Martin’s Garage.
All machines are maintained and upgraded on a regular basis to avoid downtime. “With time being of the essence, we cannot afford to suffer any breakdowns. We have our own workshop and are able to carry out most of the maintenance and repairs there.”
There is no such thing as a quiet time for this highly-regarded contractor who will work around the clock at busy times and take on extra staff if needs be to keep clients happy. Slurry spreading, ploughing and sowing takes precedence in the early part of the year, followed by silage and whole crop cutting during the summer months. After that comes more slurry spreading, hedge-cutting, excavation and dump trailer work, which is a year-round service.
Gordon and Stephen are joined in the agri contracting enterprise by Christopher Flood and James Irwin. Gints Kazbukiz, meanwhile, is employed as a paint sprayer / shot blaster in the refurbishment side of the business.
“We used to source and sell a lot of used farm machinery such as mowers, slurry tanks, loaders and hoppers, but we’ve scaled back on that,” says Gordon, who also runs a beef enterprise with his brother.
“We still sell some second-hand machinery and parts, and carry out repairs and servicing, but our main focus is on agri contracting and reconditioning tankers and trailers. We have spray booths and I know that Gints takes great satisfaction and pride in restoring old trailers and tankers to their former glory.
“Several of our customers would trade-in old tanks and stuff and we’d completely recondition them, including shot-blasting and spraying, and then sell them on at a very good price. These are cheap and cheerful and are exactly what some people are looking for. When they leave our workshop, they are 100% and we have never yet had any complaints about any of them. They are rigorously reconditioned and thoroughly tested and checked before they leave the workshop.”
When it comes to agri contracting, no job is too big or small for Tullyallen Agri Services which operates within a 20-30km radius of its base on the outskirts of Drogheda. The Healy’s provide a professional, reliable, clean and value-for-money service to customers in the Louth, Meath and North Dublin areas.
“We still have customers who our father worked for 30 or 40 years ago. Everything is done right and there is no mess left behind. When we tell someone we’ll be out to them at a certain time, we mean it. We’re extremely punctual.”
Tullyallen Agri Services would like to take this opportunity to thank its customers and suppliers for their continued support as well as its staff for their dedication, hard work and expertise.
Here’s to the next 10 years of this exceptional agri contractor!
Tullyallen Agri Services,
Golf Course Road,
Tullyallen,
Drogheda,
Co. Louth.
Tel: 041 9839651
Mobile: 086 3873761
First published in Irish Tractor & Agri magazine Vol 9 No 2, March/April 2021
