Private agricultural consultant and dairy farm manager Cathal McAleer from Co Tyrone spoke at the Teagasc winter milk conference last week about his experience of producing milk in Northern Ireland in a quota-free environment.
He said: “If you think you are bad producing slightly more milk than your contract allows, think of northern milk which is produced on a flat curve pretty much all year, unlike the more seasonal spring milk curve in the Republic of Ireland. We don’t drink any more milk than you during the winter.” This prompted one farmer to shout from the audience – ‘‘we drink it for ye’’.
With a smile on his face, Cathal continued to explain the basics of dairy farming in Northern Ireland. He said: “The average milk yield is about 6,700 litres on 2.5t of meal, with 3.24% protein, 4.01% fat and a somatic cell count of 228,000 cells/ml. Herd size has increased from 62 to 90 cows, with output per cow the key focus.”
Increasing output per cow
Cathal explained that increasing yield per cow resulted in reduced milk produced from forage and a lot more milk driven from meal feeding. He said: “On many farms, cows are being offered poor forage quality and, hence, more meal is required. Infertility has been increasing and spread calving has become the norm, with much more of an acceptance for extended lactations. Farmers have become dependent on outside help from nutritionists and herd fertility doctors.’’
Myths and reality
Cathal explained some of the myths that many Northern Irish farmers hold for not using more grass. He said: “Many farmers say it is too cold in spring to turn out cows or that performance dips as soon as cows go out. The reality is that farmers often fill cows up with feed before they go out – that’s poor management, not poor grass quality.”
Cathal went on to explain that when farmers say fields are too wet, it often means they don’t have the proper infrastructure to graze cows and that they need to put in tracks, water and access to paddocks.
Calving pattern
In terms of fertility, Cathal described the calving pattern as predominantly all year round calving, with calving intervals of 412 days and data on fertility seriously lacking on most farms. He explained that this normally resulted in overfeeding in late lactation and increased labour demands, with one labour unit per 90 cows.
With the long days in milk, Cathal said that cows had fewer peaks in lifetime production and, hence, were less efficient even though they were milking for far longer than 305 days.
Cathal said: “The other knock-on effect of all-year-round calving is that you have young stock grouping issues and sometimes farmers have calves with a three- to four-month age difference. This often leads to a lot of heifer calves not calving until they are 30 months of age. The increased number of stock groups can lead to complicated winter feeding, with some farmers having up to six different groups of stock in sheds for over six months of the year.”
Cathal pleaded with milk producers in the Republic of Ireland not to lose efficiency when quota barriers are removed.
He said efficiency must come before scale and you need to keep feed costs down and control capital spend. Low-performing cows in all systems must be culled as this increases efficiency considerably.
The factors affecting infertility up North were discussed at the conference. They included an increased level of lameness and elevated somatic cell count in herds, a prolonged housing period which reduces heat expression and poor nutritional management causing laminitis.
As many farmers strive to sell more milk, there is a reluctance to cull empty cows and, more often than not, the wrong genetics are used to produce more milk when herd health and fertility are more important.
Cathal was adamant that infertility was not being tackled by the northern industry. He said: “All that is happening is that farmers struggling to pick up heats are spending money on heat aids that cost lots of money. These machines are picking up infertile cows and getting them back in calf which is making the problem worse. Some farmers are using Fleckvieh sires for crossbreeding but the only reason they are using this breed is to increase cull cow and calf price – not to improve fertility performance.”
Cathal’s
business
targets:
Retain maximum amount of milk cheque.Simplified profitable and repeatable.Good quality of life.Industry leader to attract the best into the business.Rules for
improving grass utilisation:
Do a grass budget weekly.Soil fertility is crucial.Silage quality is important.Grass measurement non-negotiable.Grass allocations need to be controlled.Minimise poaching with good roadways.Do you have zero grazers up north?
We have everything and it’s not making farmers any more money. I know one farmer who is now plate metering his grass after buying a zero grazer because he knows that he has to cut lower grass covers to get quality grass into the cows. It’s just a pity that it took a spend of over €30,000 to make him realise that covers of under 1,500kg deliver the best quality grass for cows.
Submission rate and fertility is a
challenge for our winter milk herd –
what techniques work up north and
are there a couple of techniques that need to be used?
When I started on the farm I’m working on now, we used to have two stock bulls – one called ‘‘night rider’’ and the other ‘‘day rider’’ – thankfully, both are gone now. Genetics is the cornerstone of any dairy herd and if cows are not going in calf, you have bad genetics and you must just accept what you have. I see the more money Northern Irish farms spend on tools, etc, the less upskilled they become in picking up cows in heat. Are these tools working? Yes, they are probably getting more cows in calf, but a lot of them are picking up silent heats and they are heritable, so you could breed a herd of cows with silent heats. I’d say you’d be better giving some of these tools as a luck penny to the person who buys the cows.
Land is going to be our restriction down here – what next?
Think about expansion once you become efficient and start growing more grass. While more cows and milk might sound tempting, they might not deliver more profit. Make sure that all of the cows you have in the herd deserve to be there.
Private agricultural consultant and dairy farm manager Cathal McAleer from Co Tyrone spoke at the Teagasc winter milk conference last week about his experience of producing milk in Northern Ireland in a quota-free environment.
He said: “If you think you are bad producing slightly more milk than your contract allows, think of northern milk which is produced on a flat curve pretty much all year, unlike the more seasonal spring milk curve in the Republic of Ireland. We don’t drink any more milk than you during the winter.” This prompted one farmer to shout from the audience – ‘‘we drink it for ye’’.
With a smile on his face, Cathal continued to explain the basics of dairy farming in Northern Ireland. He said: “The average milk yield is about 6,700 litres on 2.5t of meal, with 3.24% protein, 4.01% fat and a somatic cell count of 228,000 cells/ml. Herd size has increased from 62 to 90 cows, with output per cow the key focus.”
Increasing output per cow
Cathal explained that increasing yield per cow resulted in reduced milk produced from forage and a lot more milk driven from meal feeding. He said: “On many farms, cows are being offered poor forage quality and, hence, more meal is required. Infertility has been increasing and spread calving has become the norm, with much more of an acceptance for extended lactations. Farmers have become dependent on outside help from nutritionists and herd fertility doctors.’’
Myths and reality
Cathal explained some of the myths that many Northern Irish farmers hold for not using more grass. He said: “Many farmers say it is too cold in spring to turn out cows or that performance dips as soon as cows go out. The reality is that farmers often fill cows up with feed before they go out – that’s poor management, not poor grass quality.”
Cathal went on to explain that when farmers say fields are too wet, it often means they don’t have the proper infrastructure to graze cows and that they need to put in tracks, water and access to paddocks.
Calving pattern
In terms of fertility, Cathal described the calving pattern as predominantly all year round calving, with calving intervals of 412 days and data on fertility seriously lacking on most farms. He explained that this normally resulted in overfeeding in late lactation and increased labour demands, with one labour unit per 90 cows.
With the long days in milk, Cathal said that cows had fewer peaks in lifetime production and, hence, were less efficient even though they were milking for far longer than 305 days.
Cathal said: “The other knock-on effect of all-year-round calving is that you have young stock grouping issues and sometimes farmers have calves with a three- to four-month age difference. This often leads to a lot of heifer calves not calving until they are 30 months of age. The increased number of stock groups can lead to complicated winter feeding, with some farmers having up to six different groups of stock in sheds for over six months of the year.”
Cathal pleaded with milk producers in the Republic of Ireland not to lose efficiency when quota barriers are removed.
He said efficiency must come before scale and you need to keep feed costs down and control capital spend. Low-performing cows in all systems must be culled as this increases efficiency considerably.
The factors affecting infertility up North were discussed at the conference. They included an increased level of lameness and elevated somatic cell count in herds, a prolonged housing period which reduces heat expression and poor nutritional management causing laminitis.
As many farmers strive to sell more milk, there is a reluctance to cull empty cows and, more often than not, the wrong genetics are used to produce more milk when herd health and fertility are more important.
Cathal was adamant that infertility was not being tackled by the northern industry. He said: “All that is happening is that farmers struggling to pick up heats are spending money on heat aids that cost lots of money. These machines are picking up infertile cows and getting them back in calf which is making the problem worse. Some farmers are using Fleckvieh sires for crossbreeding but the only reason they are using this breed is to increase cull cow and calf price – not to improve fertility performance.”
Cathal’s
business
targets:
Retain maximum amount of milk cheque.Simplified profitable and repeatable.Good quality of life.Industry leader to attract the best into the business.Rules for
improving grass utilisation:
Do a grass budget weekly.Soil fertility is crucial.Silage quality is important.Grass measurement non-negotiable.Grass allocations need to be controlled.Minimise poaching with good roadways.Do you have zero grazers up north?
We have everything and it’s not making farmers any more money. I know one farmer who is now plate metering his grass after buying a zero grazer because he knows that he has to cut lower grass covers to get quality grass into the cows. It’s just a pity that it took a spend of over €30,000 to make him realise that covers of under 1,500kg deliver the best quality grass for cows.
Submission rate and fertility is a
challenge for our winter milk herd –
what techniques work up north and
are there a couple of techniques that need to be used?
When I started on the farm I’m working on now, we used to have two stock bulls – one called ‘‘night rider’’ and the other ‘‘day rider’’ – thankfully, both are gone now. Genetics is the cornerstone of any dairy herd and if cows are not going in calf, you have bad genetics and you must just accept what you have. I see the more money Northern Irish farms spend on tools, etc, the less upskilled they become in picking up cows in heat. Are these tools working? Yes, they are probably getting more cows in calf, but a lot of them are picking up silent heats and they are heritable, so you could breed a herd of cows with silent heats. I’d say you’d be better giving some of these tools as a luck penny to the person who buys the cows.
Land is going to be our restriction down here – what next?
Think about expansion once you become efficient and start growing more grass. While more cows and milk might sound tempting, they might not deliver more profit. Make sure that all of the cows you have in the herd deserve to be there.
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