The Towerhill herd was founded in 1984, for the propose of producing our own stock bull for our Dairy herd. We purchased two heifers, Grange Park Miriam & Island Natalie and from these two females the entire herd was built on, always keeping about 10/12 breeding females. We purchased a third female at a society sale in Naas in 1989, but later culled her and all her progeny due to temperament problems. Since then the Simmental herd has been a closed herd and the dairy herd since ’93, using either home produced stock bulls or AI to introduce new bloodlines. Bulls are sold from one year old and heifers are either kept in the herd or sold for pedigree breeding, any not of a pedigree standard are sold commercially aswell as cross-bred heifers from our dairy herd which we sell as in-calf heifers. We initially started off showing cross-bred animals and occasionally Friesians, until the pedigree Simmental’s took over in the late 80’s. Our first notable success was in 1989 when we sold ‘Towerhill Winston’ at 8mths for £2,000 to Cecil Mcilwain, of Corrick Simmental’s Nrth Ireland, he was made available through Genus AI, as was his son ‘Corrick Competitor’. Winston is also the grand sire of ‘Woodhall Premier’. In 1995 ‘Towerhill Edward’ (Hillcrest Butcher) won the All-Ireland Yearling Bull Championship and was sold to pedigree breeder Thomas Heffernan, Kilkenny. Before selling ‘Edward’ we took semen from him for private use, he contributed greatly by producing top quality calves in both the Simmental and dairy herds. His daughter ‘Kelly’ was 3rd All-Ireland Jan Heifer in Mountbellew ’99. His son Gerome was also successful in the show ring, winning many 1st prizes aswell as champion or reserve champion with the in S.W.S.C. In 2001 ‘Towerhill Lar’, (FBX) probably the best bull we’ve had to date, was born. Unfortunately due to foot & mouth, he was never shown. However he was performance tested in Tully and won ‘Best of Breed’, a competition run by the Irish Farmers Journal and AIB bank in conjunction with Tully Test Centre. He was later sold to a Dairy Farmer in Kilkenny, but was put down less than a year later due to an injury. Bulls have been successful for us in Tully, with ‘Towerhill Nathan’, (FBX), winning first prize Simmental in the 1st year of the FBD competition, March ’03, aswell as many Championships at Club level, ‘Nathan’ was purchased by Malcahy Hamell, a Northern Irl pedigree breeder. Another prize-winner at Tully for us was ‘Towerhill Romeo’, Nathan’s full brother. ‘Romeo’ was a 3rd prize-winner in Tully and was also All-Ireland Champion January Bull, Strokestown ’04. In the same test group of bulls ‘Towerhill Ronnie’, (FBX), had the best over-all beef merit index of 121 aswell as weight gain of the Simmental breed, March ‘05. One of our best breeding cows was ‘Towerhill Christina’ (Seabank Pedro), producing many prize-winning and champion calves, as a result we’ve kept all three of her daughters in the herd ‘Emma’ (Supersonic), ‘Kristine’ (Special) & ‘Melissa’ (Towerhill Edward). All are following in their mother’s footsteps producing top quality progeny and in turn we’ve also kept their daughters in the herd. When keeping females in the herd, much of the emphases was on the bloodlines as well as the breeding success of their dam or grand-dam, but in recent year we have worked on improving the physical quality of our female’s as well as developing good bloodlines with in the herd.