A short conference on once-a-day (OAD) milking was packed to capacity last Friday. The event was organised by Teagasc and held at the Horse and Jockey in Tipperary, with people from as far away as Roscommon and Down in attendance.

Donal O’Loughlin from Newcastle in Co Tipperary spoke about his experiences of OAD milking. Initially, he started milking OAD to reduce the superlevy fine. His first stint at OAD came in September 2011. He milked the whole herd OAD in 2012 and hasn’t gone back twice a day since.

“I asked my wife in 2015 when quotas went if we should go back to twice-a-day milking and she straight away said ‘no’,” Donal said.

OAD adviser Brian Hilliard said that when herds go to OAD, milk yield drops by about 25% and milk solids drops by about 20% as fat and protein percentage usually increases on once-a-day.

Both Brian and Donal said one of the big challenges was finding cows that were suited to the system.

Some cows will get fat and dry up as soon as they go in-calf in June or July. Donal said that his replacement rate increased in the first few years after going OAD as the unsuitable cows were sold and replaced with heifers. He was culling around 15% when he went OAD first but is culling around 5% to 8% now, based on milk yield, udder ligaments and SCC. Only 3% of the herd was not in-calf in 2017.

His ideal cow is a 50:50 Holstein Friesian and Jersey cross. There is a good bit of Swedish Red and Norwegian Red in his herd. He started crossbreeding in 2003. Donal sold 398kg of milk solids per cow in 2017, from 300kg of meal. He grew 14t/ha on a long and high farm.

Cow numbers have grown from 96 in 2002 to 224 cows today. Donal has part-time help on the farm during spring and autumn. He starts milking at 7am every morning and is finished for 5pm every evening, in time to collect the children from the crèche.

He is the chair of the Newcastle juvenile and adult GAA club so he says he is away at meetings four or five nights a week and says he wouldn’t be able to do these things if he was milking twice a day.

Brian Hilliard said that while yield drops on OAD, costs should drop also. He said that labour, feed, electricity and parlour running costs should all be less when cows are milked OAD.

Cashflow forecast

George Ramsbottom from Teagasc went through a cashflow forecast for a farm considering going to OAD. In his example, the farm had 125 cows and produced 425kg MS/cow in 2017 when milked twice a day.

This was forecast to fall to 351kg/cow in 2018 when milked OAD with the same amount of meal (500kg) fed. Milk solids per cow was expected to increase to 383kg in 2023. Ten extra cows were milked in the OAD scenario.

Cashflow fell by €14,000 in year one of OAD, €13,000 in year two and €2,000 in year three compared to the base year at twice-a-day milking. Milk price was set at 30c/l. However, the graphs showed an increase in profitability over those years when the cows were milked twice a day. This was accounted for by extra heifer sales.