Scale driving dairy future in Northern Ireland

The Ulster Grassland Society held its Autumn meeting last week In Omagh, Co Tyrone. Over 200 farmers attended a walk on Drew and Valerie McConnell's Omagh farm in the morning and discussions in the afternoon on the future of the beef and dairy enterprises. Jack Kennedy reports

Phenomenal expansion within the farm gate

Drew McConnell took over the family farm in 1993 and is the third generation McConnell to farm at Carrigans Park. At that time there were 70 dairy cows, 20 beef cows and 40 breeding sheep with 340,000 litres (75,000 gallons) of quota.

Since then the farm has developed with the dairy, beef and sheep enterprises all expanded. They now farm over 290 acres (190 owned and 100 rented) with 910,000 litres owned (200,200 gallons) milking 103 dairy cows. The beef enterprise consists of 31 beef cows + calves and 40 (1 to 2 year old cattle). The sheep enterprise is 100 ewes and 152 lambs. Phenomenal expansion within the farm gate.

The farm is 350 feet above sea level at home farm rising to 700 feet above sea level on outside blocks. Soil is best described as a blue clay with loam. Drew described is as heavy soil in parts (gets wet very quickly (with 50 inches of rain) not like the West of county Tyrone) but with good grasses from an intensive reseeding programme. All the land is in Least Disadvantaged Area (LFA) and has been drained.

During this time Valerie left her career and joined in the business, taking over responsibility for the suckler herd, which has been increased with all progeny taken through to beef. Drew was also practising as an accountant for 4 years before taking over the farm. The only other labour employed is a Greenmount student plus part time casual labour (mainly for silage making etc).

Issues that were discussed at the meeting

On Dairy Profit: The focus on dairy for Drew and Valerie is to maximise profit per hectare with moderately high yielding cows. Quota is not limiting but land is limiting. The McConnells have almost 300 acres but Drew emphasises 50 are classified as rough grazing and 50 very marginal.

From the Greenmount Benchmarking performance the McConnells had total costs of 10.66 p/l (15.5 c/litre). This does not include any cost on family labour or land charge. This compares to the top 25% of farmers in this yield band with total costs of 10.00 ppl (14.5c/litre). The key variables in the profit analysis are: variable costs of 6.28ppl or £554 per cow (€806) and overhead costs of 4.38ppl or £387 per cow (€562). Drew made the point that he hopes the processors will soon start to see the light and start paying farmers for solids rather than paying for water. Drew is part of the Protein Improver project, Premium Milk Project (2000) and Focus Farm since 2004.

On Dairy Production: Milk yield is 9,004 litres/cow (1,980 gallons) with just 3,057 litres from forage. This is slightly above the top 25% yield band in benchmarking averaging 7,741 litres (1,700 gallons).

Cows are calving from September to May. Over 2,676 kg/cow of meal is fed. At an average of £150/ton (€195) this is a meal bill of close to £40.170 (€58,470) for the cows. Butterfat was 3.86% for 04/05 with protein percentage at 3.27%. Calving index is at 400 days with over 25.93% replacement rate. No culling as a rule on infertility. Bulls are selected on high PIN value for fat and protein. Drew in his own words has a commercial herd and wants to breed a hard working cow and not specifically for type. Meal is fed in the parlour and in the out of parlour feeders near the cubicles. Drew has not invested in a feeding wagon as he would have needed to redesign housing.

On rearing replacements: The McConnells rear all their own replacements with heifers bred from the top 60% of cows on 'Lactation Value' basis. (Lactation Value is a figure derived from putting an economic value on milk yield and solids produced). They do their own AI with heifers calving down at 2 years of age. Drew had 4 heifers on display and challenged the audience to decide by looking at the cows which cow was the best cow. He than displayed production figures for each cow and showed the considerable difference between the cows based on their production figures. One heifer has produced 10,117 litres at 3.45% fat and 3.03% protein giving her a lactation value of £1,635. Another not yielding as high at 8,693 gave 5.22% fat and 3.53% protein giving her a lactation value of £1,803. This is the reason Drew is now selecting bulls on solids and lactation value rather than just milk yield.

On feeding: Emphasis for the McConnells is on feeding high quality silage and meal. Higher yielding cows get 8 kg meal in parlour and fed more in out of parlour feeders on a feed to yield basis - 0.45 kg/litre milk. In summer turnout to grass is as early as possible. In 2005 it was 19 April. Meal feeding remains high with a high maize nut fed in parlour with protected fat (17% crude protein fresh weight). Cows get up to 10 kg meal and 2 kg though out of parlour feeders to cows yielding greater than 45 litres per day. In 2005 on 13 May there was 115 acres cut for first cut silage. Dry matter was tested at 25.9% with pH 3.6 and ME 11.8 MJ/kg DM. There were 95 acres cut on 11 July with similar test results.