The Francis farm at Ballyvaughan in west Clare is nestled between the Burren and the Atlantic Ocean. Tony and his wife Frances are farming with their son Tomas, milking 88 cows on a 26ha milking platform. A further 20ha is leased one mile away from the milking platform.

While farming in a beautiful and picturesque location, Tony explained that it’s not all plain sailing, with a strong north west wind blowing in off the sea hampering grass growth rates and even knocking back hedgerows.

As a result, grass was scarce and Tony was feeding two round bales of silage to the milkers per day and had upped the meal to 5.5kg/cow/day to help slow down the round. On such a dry farm Tony says you can’t get enough rain during the summer.

Milk production from this black and white herd is excellent with the cows delivering over 550kg MS/cow from around 1.2t of meal per cow. The EBI of the herd is high at €179 and while Tony says he’s not breeding for production, he wouldn’t use a bull that’s minus for milk either. His aim is to pick bulls that are predicted to be over 30kg MS and over 0.15% protein and plus 0.25% for fat.

Tomas is working part time off farm meaning he is around for the big jobs. A new slurry spreader with dribble bar was purchased last year so they can now follow the cows with watery slurry facilitating a reduction in chemical N use. Tony reckons they’ve only spread two-thirds of the nitrogen this year that they normally spread.

“We’re spreading 20 units/ac of nitrogen after each grazing. There was a time that used to be 35 units a round, then we dropped to 30, then 27 and now 20 units/ac. It all helps to improve our sustainability,” Tony says.

He’s a big fan of selective dry cow therapy with only 30 cows getting antibiotics last year and 40 cows getting sealer only. He milk records four times per year, something he says he could not live without and puts great value on the October milk recording for deciding which cows can get selective dry cow treatment.

The Francis family have made some major investments in the farm in recent years with additional cow cubicles and a major job on the parlour, converting it from a six unit to an eight unit double-up machine. Milking the 88 cows takes about one hour and 10 minutes.