Last week, the 17th winners of the NDC/Kerrygold Quality Milk Awards opened their farm to the public for the annual winner’s farm walk.

The event was an opportunity for the couple of hundred farmers in attendance to see what it takes to run an award-winning farm.

The Ryan family are the reigning champions, having won the competition last October. They operate a three-way partnership with Mary and Tom working alongside their son Michael, who’s engaged to Kelly Murphy; the young couple are currently building a house on the farm.

Michael is the fifth generation of the Ryans to farm at Lisheen, near the village of Moyne outside Thurles in Co Tipperary. The theme of the farm walk last week was ‘A tradition of excellence in dairy’ and that tradition was evident throughout the day.

The family are milking 158 cows this year with the herd gradually increasing each year, up from 72 cows milked in 2012. A significant year for the family was 2018 as this was the year Michael graduated with a degree in agriculture, a new partnership was formed and a new 20-unit milking parlour was built.

Michael’s interest in farming – and in particular dairy – was evident from a young age. He says growing up, the farm had cereals, sucklers, cattle and they even grew and sold potatoes in local shops.

“I was always more interested in dairy farming and cows anyway,” he says, “but given the fact that no other enterprise would enable me to come home and farm other than dairying, it was an easy enough decision to specialise in that,” he says.

So gradually the other enterprises disappeared and now it’s just cows and replacement heifers on the farm. The final ‘other enterprise’ they had on the farm was selling dairy stock bulls, but Michael says the changes to the nitrates rules put an end to that.

“We were in the top band for nitrates and when the derogation went from 250kg to 220kg/ha we had to re-think the whole thing,” he explains. “Looking back now, we were overstocked with an overall farm stocking rate of 2.9 livestock units/ha and we were buying in some silage.

“We’ve since reduced the meal feeding, pushed back the calving date from mid-January to early February and made sure not to be using bulls with a high-PD for milk and it means we’re now in the middle band for nitrates.

“Overall it’s made more sense for us,” he says.

With 56ha in the milking platform and 81ha overall, the milking platform is stocked at 2.8 cows/ha and the overall stocking rate is 2.42 cows/ha with 38 in-calf heifers and 37 heifer calves on the farm.

The farm typically grows around 13t DM/ha of grass, with Michael measuring weekly and more often during the high-growth periods.

He describes the farm as being in three sections: one-third good-quality free-draining land; one-third peaty; and one-third in between.

Anyone who visited the farm can see that it’s not just milk quality that makes the Ryans stand out. They are top of their game across lots of metrics.

For example, 100% of the farm is at target pH of 6.5 so no lime is needed, 90% of the farm is index three or four for phosphorus while 61% of the farm is index three or four for potash.

The low figure for potash is not for a lack of trying to improve, with Michael saying that they find it very hard to build up K, but that the little-and-often approach seems to be working. They are currently spreading 18 units/acre of protected urea 29:0:14 plus sulphur and getting on well with it, with a current growth rate of 86kg/ha/day.

Traditionally, the herd was British Friesian-based but is now more like 70:30 Friesian:Holstein, although Michael says they are drifting more towards Holstein each year.

“We made the decision a few years ago that we were going to chase EBI and it is working with improved fat and protein percent and less lameness and health problems,” Michael says.

Performance is good with an 89% six-week calving rate for 2026 and a 93% six-week calving rate for 2025. The herd sold 548kg milk solids per cow (MS/cow) in 2025 from 948kg of meal. So far this year the herd has been fed 398kg of meal per cow on average.

Michael says the plan in the spring is to feed 5kg/cow when cows are in full time, 4kg if they are in and out, and 3kg when out full time. Despite the difficult spring, the Ryans still managed to get 25% of the farm grazed in February this year.

Grass

On the day of the walk, the milking platform was stocked at 4.03 cows/ha as there were a few surplus paddocks to be cut for silage. Normally, the target stocking rate for the summer months is 3.6 cows/ha and Michael explains why.

“It seems to work well for us as it gives us a chance to correct paddocks by taking them out for silage,” he says. “It gives us room to breathe without being under pressure, so it’s the sweet spot.

“The spring was very difficult, but so far the summer has been great from a grass growth point of view and between pre-mowing and taking out paddocks for bales a lot of the farm has been cut,” he says.

Both himself and Tom are fans of pre-mowing grass in front of the cows, but are careful about how they use it, saying they start early in May and only pre-mow paddocks that are fit for grazing at covers of 1,300kg to 1,500kg DM/ha.

Michael also pointed out that they are careful not to pre-mow too much of the farm at once, warning that doing so could slow down re-growths.

Another area of grassland management that might differ from other farms is the insistence on fresh grass at each milking.

If the cows are due to get three grazings per paddock, they will give the herd half of the field on the first grazing and then half of the remainder of the field on the second grazing with the remaining one-quarter of the paddock for the last grazing.

Michael says that doing so helps to keep the cows moving quickly between milkings.

Another tool he praised was the use of a battery-operated timed gate handle release mechanism, meaning the cows leave the paddock in the morning by themselves and are already in the collecting yard for milking time.

Succession

When asked about the succession plan for the farm, Michael says that it’s all about communicating well with one another.

“It starts with good communication, you need to lay it all out and come up with a plan that suits everyone. I suppose it’s a conversation that some don’t like having, but it has to be had,” he says.

Michael says he was given the responsibility of picking the bulls and looking after the grass even when he was still in college.

He says that Tom was more than capable of doing this himself, but by giving him the responsibility to do it was motivating and empowering.

Milk quality

For last year, milk quality on the farm was unsurprisingly excellent, with an average somatic cell count (SCC) of 91,000 and total bacterial count (TBC) of 9,000. Tom went through the protocol which includes pre-spraying, dry-wiping and post spraying all cows at every milking.

The protocol around stripping cows pre-milking evolves based on the time of year. In spring, each quarter is stripped at each milking but when cows are out at grass full time that changes to stripping the back two quarters on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday and stripping the front two quarters on a Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

Cows that have had mastitis or high cell count get two red bands on their leg and get their clusters dipped after each milking to prevent spreading the infection to other cows. This continues until that cow is milk-recorded again and shows a reduction in cell count.

The Ryans installed Smaxtec health and heat boluses last year and this alerts them to possible cases of mastitis also. The standard treatment for mastitis is antibiotic tube and udder cream but Tom says if a cow has a swollen quarter she’ll get a an anti-inflammatory also.