Ronan has 80% of his cows calved and 63% of his farm grazed. He is farming in two blocks, having purchased a 20 hectare farm last year and is in the process of converting this to a dairy farm.

He reseeded 6.5 hectares of this farm last year and hopes to do the rest next month. A 12 unit temporary milking parlour has been installed on this block but he hasn’t started milking there yet. As a result, the stocking rate on the home farm is high at the moment at 4.9 milking cows per hectare.

The herd is being milked once a day. Ronan plans to move some of the herd to the outside farm in the next few weeks and then milk the two herds himself once a day. 107 cows will be milked between the two farms this year and the stocking rate on the milking blocks will be 2.7 cows/ha.

Calving

Calving started on 4 February. 74% calved in six weeks and 30% of the herd are first lactation. Only six grazing days were missed so far this spring, and very little poaching damage has been done, which has been exceptional performance given the amount of rainfall. The farm is reasonably dry, but has a great network of roadways and multiple access points, and Ronan used on/off grazing extensively.

Average farm cover is currently 430kg/ha and growth rate is 14kg per day. Ronan is currently feeding 4kg of meal and 8kg of grass per cow but is going to have to cut back the amount of grass to preserve average farm cover and push out the start of the second round as he only has four paddocks with high covers left.

“The farm cover and growth are lower than I’d like but I think growth is ready to take off. I have 50 unit/acre of nitrogen spread, more going out next week and the farm has been grazed well in the first round. I will probably have to feed 5 or 6kg of silage for the next five or six days but hopefully growth will have picked up by then, as I think it should.”

Cows are milking 1.36kg of milk solids per day at 16 litres of milk and 3.58% protein and 4.68% fat. About 85% of the cows have some Jersey breeding in them.

Browse the gallery above for photos of the farm walk and Ronan's farm records, and read the full report in next week’s Irish Farmers Journal.

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Round two of the Teagasc grass walks begin