What makes a farm an award-winning farm? This was the question on the minds of the couple of hundred farmers that made their way to the Kennedy farm near Cahir in Co Tipperary, winners of the NDC and Kerrygold milk quality awards for 2024.

Looking back at the winners of this competition over the last 10 or 15 years, it’s fair to say that the majority of the winners have herd sizes close to or just a little bit bigger than the national average.

So for the Kennedys to win the competition, with close to 400 cows is unusual.

Their success in the competition does away with the notion that achieving high standards and maintaining them is not possible when farming at large scale or when relying on employees for day-to-day management.

Kennedy farm

Aidan Kennedy is the sixth generation of the family to farm at Kilmoyler, at the gateway to the Glen of Aherlow. It’s a well-established farm business and the Kennedys were always operating at scale, milking 250 cows in 1980.

Today, the milking platform extends to 132.5ha with another 61ha of support ground for youngstock and silage.

The quota decades brought stagnation in terms of cow numbers and it wasn’t until 2015 that cow numbers increased.

Over that time, Aidan focused on technical farm performance.

A founding member of the Dairymis discussion group based out of Moorepark, Aidan was exposed to the latest Teagasc research on grassland management and profitable genetics.

Last year, the farm grew 14.7t DM/ha of grass and so far this year the farm has grown 10.9t DM/ha, so Aidan is on track for similar total growth in 2025.

This is despite a current grass deficit where average farm cover is down to 551kg/ha or just 162kg/cow with a growth rate of 32kg/day.

“We should be feeding silage but we held off until after the open day is over. The cows were on 4kg of meal per day but we’ve it increased it to 6kg now. Milk yield dropped in the last few collections. We need more rain. It’s getting tough on cows as pre-grazing yield is getting low,” Aidan said.

Over the last three years from 2022 to 2024 the farm has grown in excess of 15t DM/ha, so it’s a great grass growing farm. The farm is situated in between two big rivers – the Suir and the Aherlow, both of which are subject to flooding after heavy rain.

While the land does flood, it goes down quickly and the floodplain area is very productive but it does mean that the area available for grazing in springtime can be curtailed. When that’s the case, Aidan says he prioritises getting cows out to grass by day only.

He has also been incorporating clover, but finds it a challenge;

“At this stage about 40% of the milking platform is set with clover but I find it hard to manage.

“Maybe I’m using too much nitrogen, it’s hard to know but it’s not easy to manage that’s for sure,” he says.

On genetics, historically, the Kennedys had been milking a purebred Friesian herd, but at this stage the only evidence of Friesian genetics is the old herd sign in the farm yard.

Aidan explained that the herd was first crossed with Norwegian Red and then Jersey, with most of the cows in the herd now Jersey crossbred.

“We’re backing off on the Jersey now and no longer using any full Jersey bulls. We’re still using Kiwicross bulls but we don’t really want any more than one third Jersey from now on.

“That decision has been driven by the calf issue, and while we had no problem selling all calves this spring that hasn’t always been the case so it’s something that we’re conscious of,” Aidan says.

The herd EBI is €261 with €80 for milk and €113 for fertility. The maintenance sub-index is €28 and the PD for fat and protein percent is 0.29% and 0.16% respectively.

The herd has a PD for milk volume of -42kg, which shows that good production is still possible even with a minus milk figure.

All of these EBI figures are set to change with the new updates to the EBI coming out later this month.

Last year, the herd delivered 483kg MS/cow to Dairygold Co-op from a total of 948kg of meal per cow, up from the target of 750kg of meal per cow.

So far this year the Kennedys have fed 571kg of meal per cow and at a current feeding rate of 6kg/head it’s likely that the final figure for 2025 will be something similar to 2024.

The milking platform stocking rate is just under three cows/ha.

On production, the fat and protein percentage is one of the highest in Dairygold Co-op, with fat at 4.96% and protein at 3.79% for 2024.

Last week, the herd was producing 1.77kg MS/cow from 19l of milk with a fat and protein content of 4.97% and 4.08% respectively.

Aidan and Derval’s two children, Nickolas and Galina are both very interested in the farm business, but are currently pursuing their own careers away from farming.

The day-to-day management of the farm is the responsibility of farm manager, Cork man, Roger O’Donnell. The UCD graduate spent seven years working in New Zealand before coming back to work on the O’Donnell farm. Roger lives in a house on the farm.

Significant investment was made in the farm in 2019, with the construction of a new rotary milking parlour, cubicle shed and slurry storage.

“The set-up was very dilapidated; we hadn’t enough slurry storage and the old rotary milking parlour was very old and worn out. We had to make a decision to either get out of dairy farming or increase cow numbers and invest in the future,” Aidan said.

The decision was made to invest in the farm, with a new 50 bail DeLaval rotary built, along with cubicles, slurry storage and enhanced calving facilities. Aidan described the parlour as basic, but it has cluster removers, retention bars and a basic teat spraying system.

According to Philip Brett from DeLaval, there are a lot more extras that could have been included, such as milk meters, feed to yield, robotic teat spraying, etc.

All of the new building work was completed in 2019, when Aidan was in his late 60’s. Many farmers might baulk at such investment at that stage in life, but the reality is that the investment secured the future of the farm.

By improving the facilities the Kennedy farm is now a really attractive place to work, whether the farm will be managed in the future by family, employees or sharemilkers, etc.

Aidan and Roger are assisted by Paul Moloney who has worked on the farm for the last 30 years along with Vasile Barbieru and extra help in spring. Big use is also made of contractors, with two local contractors providing almost all of the machinery related tasks.

“We’re not into machinery, we have two tractors, one is a 1992 and the other is a 1995 so we get contractors to do almost everything.

“There are times when a fertiliser spreader would be handy but we don’t have a decent tractor to drive it,” Aidan said.

Roger added that paying the contractors quickly is a key part of ensuring good service;

“We try to ensure they are paid as quickly as possible. If they have a bill ready on the day then we’ll pay it and in return we are provided with a really good contracting service.”

Milking start times is 5.30am and 300 cows can be milked per hour. Finish time for all employees is 5pm.

The farm has its own WhatApp group for the team to communicate and updates on milk quality, grass wedge, rosters, etc are shared on the group.

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