The calving season is well and truly underway here on our dairy and beef farm which is situated on the Cavan/Leitrim border in North Longford. There are 27 of the 34 suckler cows calved and 21 of the 31 dairy cows calved and we, like all other farmers across all enterprises, are hoping for some decent weather and fair prices for the remainder of the year.

Some of the stronger September born suckler calves will be weaned prior to turnout and will proceed to grass on the out-farm which is 17 miles away in Lisryan, on the Westmeath border. The younger calves will be turned out on rented land here at home, and will be weaned later in the year. Charolais heifers were sold last week at the special sale in Carrigallen Mart and some cull cows were sold about a fortnight ago.

Fragmented land

If I could wave a magic wand and put the land together, I would! It wouldn’t be to save the 34-mile round trip a few times weekly, sometimes it’s actually good to get an hour in the day to relax and listen to the radio en route to and from Lisryan. It would be, however, to maximise milk production and increase profit per hectare. This fragmentation of land is true for many farmers across the north midlands and along the western seaboard and this, unfortunately, seems to be limiting expansion of dairy herds, as is our case.

Beef versus dairy

I believe that the dairy industry will continue to be more profitable than the beef industry and thus, maximising the milk production from the hectares available is important to the farm business. This however must be done within the reams of practicality and maintaining a suckler herd with the produced offspring and purchased stock populating the off-farm until sold is the most viable option at the moment.

I have assessed options in my head and with my father and brother regarding once-a-day milking on the out-farm and even a robot but my situation with being employed with Teagasc limits my input to a certain extent in the home farm.

The focus will be to expand slightly at home, which will mean relocating some silage ground to the out-farm and to maintain target growth rates from the suckler bulls and heifers and ultimately maximise profitability when sold as stores.

My two key targets for the dairy and beef herds are to reduce cost of producing a litre of milk and to maximise live weight gain respectively. Control the controllables’!