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Robin Clements’ dairy farm was described as “a farm in transition” by Dairylink Ireland adviser Conail Keown during a farm walk on Tuesday.
The farm near Trillick, Co. Tyrone was converted from suckler cows and sheep to dairying five years ago. The dairy herd is continuing to increase in size with 150 autumn calving Holstein Friesian cows at present and a plan to reach 220 cows in 2018.
So far 90 cows have calved this year and 30 high yielders are currently housed with the remaining 60 back at grass after being housed for two weeks during wet weather.
The recent dry weather continued on Tuesday and around 50 farmers got time away to visit Robin’s farm. Visitors were told that cows are yielding 24.1 litres at 4.15% butterfat and 3.48% protein. The housed cows are receiving 10kg of concentrates (5kg in the parlour and 5kg through the feeder wagon) and the cows at grass are receiving 6kg concentrates in the parlour. Milk yield per cow from the herd last year was 7,149 litres.
Land type
Robin purchased 64ha of land last year and has been working to improve both this land block and the existing home farm through drainage, addressing soil fertility issues and reseeding.
Conail Keown said that 76% of the farm is sub optimal for either pH, phosphorous or potassium. He said that the cost of addressing deficiencies in soil fertility will be around £15,000 with the plan being to divide this up over three years.
Robin also sub soils land and told visitors that it improves drainage and grass growth by addressing soil compaction on his heavy clay type land at minimal cost. “We do all the machinery work ourselves and also do some contracting locally. On this type of land, gravel tunnel draining is the most effective type of draining but it is costly if you are to do it right, probably at around £500 per acre for ourselves,” he said.
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