A father-and-son team in Co Kildare has built a growing winter feed business on the foundation of their tillage farm, the Irish Farmers Journal reports.

The family operation demonstrates how tillage growers can capture additional margin by moving beyond selling raw grain and straw into supplying finished winter feed products to livestock farmers. The diversification sits within a broader Irish trend: as fodder costs rise and livestock producers seek security of supply through the winter months, demand for reliable, locally produced feed has strengthened.

For the Kildare pair, the tillage enterprise supplies the raw material base. That vertical integration matters for field-level economics. Growing the feed ingredients on-farm means the business captures both the commodity price and the processing margin, rather than selling grain at farmgate prices and watching the value-added pass to a third-party compounder.

The move also carries risk-management benefits. Feed manufacturing on a tillage farm gives the growers an internal outlet for their grain in years when merchant prices are weak, smoothing revenue across seasons. For livestock customers, buying from a known local producer with traceable ingredients offers an alternative to imported feed and global commodity volatility.

The Irish Farmers Journal piece adds to a growing body of coverage showing Irish tillage farmers pursuing on-farm processing and direct supply relationships as a response to tight cereal margins, rising input costs and uncertainty over the timing and rate of CAP area payments.

Farmers weighing a similar diversification should watch the regulatory requirements first. Producing and selling feed commercially in Ireland brings obligations around feed registration, labelling and traceability under Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine rules, plus capital costs for storage, milling and mixing capacity.

Readers can follow the full account of how the Kildare family structured the business, its scale and its customer base in the original Irish Farmers Journal report.