The Salesian Agricultural College in Pallaskenry, Co Limerick, recently installed an impressive 5m wide underpass on the farm to provide access to 175ac of grazing ground. This block is located across the road from the 135ac block that is adjoining the parlour.

“We are currently milking 300 cows on the farm and the aim is to push this to over 400 in the coming years,” said college principal Derek O’Donoghue.

“We used to be holding cows before and after milking either side of the road, which led to issues with dirty roadways, labour and lameness.”

The investment means cows will not have to be held after milking and can have access back out to pasture. As all cows will not be moving in one large group, there will also be a benefit in terms of cow movement.

There has been a big change in the system operated on the farm in the past few years, with a pedigree Holstein herd in place up until January 2017. It was at this point that the herd was sold off with the move towards a high-EBI herd, with young cows and heifers being purchased in.

A blinding layer of fine material is yet to be added to the ramps leading in and out of the underpass.

The herd is still relatively young, with milk solids at 430kg last year. This was done off an average of 750kg of concentrates. The aim on the farm would be to feed 500kg but the difficult conditions in 2018 left their mark. As the herd matures, the aim would be to push solids up to an average of 500kg.

Investment

The new underpass is seen as a vital piece of infrastructure for the future of the farm, with upgrades made to the grazing infrastructure in the last few years.

“We were at a stage where the water piping on the farm wasn’t good enough to be able to bring the volume of water to paddocks that we needed quickly enough,” Derek said. “We have the entire farm on a loop water system, which ensures we have enough pressure in the system.

Resurfacing of the road cost approximatley €3,000.

“We now have a grazing platform accessible to cows of 310 acres and a cow type that is able to walk to paddocks that would traditionally have been too far for the high-yielding cows.”

The underpass itself is large, at 5m wide, the same width as the roadways. For larger herds in particular, a narrow underpass can act as a major bottleneck on the farm so ensuring it is the same width as the roadways is key. There are a total of six 2m long culverts, giving a total length of the underpass of 12m. Internally, the culverts are 2.1m in height. Each culvert section has a weight of 23.5t.

A blinding layer of fine material is added to all farm roadways.

Artificial turf was installed on the surface of the underpass to improve cow comfort and flow. At one end of the underpass is a tank to collect any potential runoff. The roads down into and back out of the underpass have yet to receive a blinding layer of finer material.

Cost

The total cost of the development came to €82,000 excluding VAT, with all work being completed by Croom concrete. The road closure licence was also secured by Croom Concrete. The plans for the project were completed by Grasstec. Farmers will often wonder where the money goes to with an underpass, so a full breakdown of the costs can be seen in Table 1.

A blinding layer of fine material is added to all farm roadways.

“It is a sizeable investment for any farm but we had to look at it in terms of labour and lameness in particular,” Derek said. The full investment works out at approximately €468/ac of the 175ac block.