The Ulster Grassland Society spring meeting, held last week on Cormac Cunningham’s farm outside Omagh, bucked the trend from the typical Northern Ireland dairy farm.

Cormac and farm manager Cathal McAleer are proof that more can be got from grazed grass in Northern Ireland, despite the climate and soil type.

The farm walk was held on a fully leased farm. Cormac leased the farm in 2012 on a long-term basis. He was already milking 230 high-input autumn-calving cows on the Cunningham home farm.

Being heavily involved in the family business, Strathroy Dairies, Cormac made the decision to hire a manager to run the new leased farm. This is where Cathal McAleer steps in. Cathal was working as a grazing consultant at the time and had done some work with Cormac. He is passionate about low-cost grass-based dairy farming. The two men walked the farm before the lease was signed.

“By the time we finished walking the farm, we were both out of breath, such was the steepness of the hills. This was the key for me, as it means that the rain can get away fast – crucial in a high-rainfall area,” Cathal said.

“The other thing that stood out was the high percentage of perennial ryegrass in the swards, which was testament to the way the farm was previously managed.”

Today, the 56ha farm is supporting 148 cows, but the plan is to milk 140 cows this summer. All cows are spring-calving and the majority are Jersey crossbred, but about 40 cows from the old herd, which was purchased when the farm was leased, are still on the farm.

“From the start, we tried to focus on what is important for profit and this was cows, grass and getting the right people, so we have focused on this more so than developing the farmyard or investing in machinery,” he said. That said, a 20-unit milking parlour and cubicle shed was built in 2013.

Soils

Growing more grass was a key focus of the farm walk. Cathal said that when they took over the farm in 2012, the soil fertility was low.

Every field was soil-sampled and the lowest fields were targeted first, with more lime, phosphorus (P) and potassium (K). In hindsight, he says this was the wrong thing to do.

“The average soil fertility in a field is very misleading, especially on hilly ground, with flat and steep parts. We have found that the sides of the hills have shallow soils and are lower in fertility. The cows love grazing the grass on the sides of hills, but won’t lie there, so they do most of their lying and dunging on either the tops or the bottoms.

“In effect, this transfers the nutrients from the slopes to the flats and makes the soil fertility problem on the slopes even worse. The fact that the slopes are free-draining makes them more vulnerable to leaching and run-off too.

“Now, we no longer take soil samples from the whole field; instead, we take separate samples from the slopes and the flat parts and then spread fertiliser accordingly.”

After sampling the slopes, the pH was found to be 5.1, even though the average of the farm was over 6. So now he is spreading extra lime, P and K fertiliser on the slopes, with reduced rates for the flat parts. Basically, he is targeting the fertiliser and lime to the parts of the fields where it is needed most.

The farm grew 11.5t/ha of grass last year. Cathal’s long-term goal is to grow 14t/ha, but he doesn’t know if it is achievable or not.

Just over half of the farm has been reseeded since 2012 with Drumbo, Aberchoice and Abergain varieties. Parts of the farm have been sub-soiled and spike-aerated to improve aeration and drainage.

For Cathal to grow 14t of grass, he says he needs to “limit what is limiting”. For him, this is soil fertility, so he spreads the whole farm with about 2,000 gallons/acre of slurry in early spring.

During the main grazing season, he spreads fertiliser on 40% or 50% of the farm every 10 days, spreading on the next two or three paddocks to be grazed and also what was grazed over the previous week.

Cow type

Breeding started last Monday. Cathal is using a mix of high-EBI Friesian and Jersey AI bulls, all from Progressive Genetics.

At this stage, a high proportion of the herd has some Jersey breeding in them, except the older cows that were purchased on the farm, which Cathal describes as “hardy Friesians”.

One of the reasons he feels they are lasting so long is that older cows or any cows that had any problem such as lameness gets a Jersey or an Angus bull, so they don’t have hard calvings.

On the day of the walk, the cows were milking 27 litres per day at 3.3% protein and 4% fat. The herd had been on 4kg of meal, but had just been dropped back to 2kg as grass growth and average farm cover was up.

Cathal got a growth rate of 41kg for the previous week, farm cover was 700kg/ha, or 200kg per cow, and pre-grazing yield was 1,700kg.

The herd was tail-painted a week before breeding started. Any cow calved in the previous three weeks was on once-a-day milking along with any cow that held a cleaning or was in low body condition score.

When asked if putting cows on once-a-day milking is affecting the volume of milk sold off the farm, Cathal said it does reduce the peak slightly, but that you will get this milk and more back next February when the once-a-day cows calve earlier.

Last year, just 5% of the herd was not in calf after 12 weeks of breeding. The planned start of calving is 10 February and Cathal had 89% of the herd calved six weeks later this spring.

Average yield last year was 6,000 litres per cow at 4.26% fat and 3.47% protein (478kg milk solids per cow, 1,200kg milk solids per hectare) from 1t of meal per cow. The replacement rate is 18%.