The Greenfield Kilkenny farm lost money last year. It made a slight profit on paper but the bank account is down €21,000 as cash costs exceeded farm income. The farm was able to handle the cash deficit as there is over €125,000 on deposit built up over the years since the farm started trading in early 2010. So, as cows start milking in year eight of the 15-year farm lease, there are 380 cows set to calve down and effectively €100,000 in the bank account.

Financial update

Last year, the farm made a very slight paper profit of €4,994 but a €21,000 cash deficit. Remember, when comparing to your own farm figures this farm pays for all labour, all land rent, all bank repayments and all other production costs. The difference between cash and profit is the inventory change and depreciation on buildings, etc.

Greenfield, farming as a company with only one third shareholding in Glanbia, only receives one third of the co-op support, so base milk price was very poor throughout 2016. The fact that about 25% of annual supply is in Glanbia fixed milk price schemes kept the business alive in 2016. The other income came from calf and cull cow sales. Again, the number of cows not in calf was less than 10% so it allowed room for some culling for bad legs and mastitis, etc. The business has no Single Farm Payment or any other scheme payments.

Costs

On the cost side, most of the costs were line ball with the previous year. Again, it was a good year for grass so total feed cost was low at €10,310 for purchased concentrate for the dairy herd. The minerals figure is a little higher and I suppose that reflects the low meal bill to some extent as minerals are fed through the water when cows are on grazed grass only. Contracting includes all the machinery work – first-cut silage, fertiliser, umbilical slurry, cutting and baling over 1,000 bales.

The slurry spreading came to €17,682 and tied into this is the cleaning of the stand-off pad and the subsequent dung spreading.

Veterinary came to €26,899 and this includes about €9,800 of vaccines, €5,700 of hoof care and then about €11,200 of dry cow tubes, testing fees and routine calls. Fertilisers is a high figure again but a good bit of potash and phosphorus was spread on those paddocks with low indexes along with the 250kg of bag nitrogen. The other big costs are labour, bank repayments and land rental.

Physical performance

Again, the herd delivered super milk solids matched by a low somatic cell count. Yes, the per-cow volume is not massive for a mature herd at 4,900kg per cow but it is reasonable for an early spring calving herd on grazed grass mainly.

I visited the farm on Tuesday afternoon. To give you a feel for what is happening at the moment, in the first hour of my visit three cows calved, the vet diagnosed two cows with left- and right-displaced abomasums. The freshly calved cows were milked for biestings, tails were clipped up and the milking cows were moved to fresh grass (see video online).

Cows started calving 10 days ago and over 80 have calved already (about 20% of the herd) with a lot of the in-calf heifers calving now. Cows are only milked once a day for the moment to take the pressure off the milking cows and probably, more importantly, to allow farm staff more time to deal with the daily issues.

The stand-off pad was cleaned last week. This was the first clean-off since cows started on the pad in mid-November. It took a himac, a digger, and three dump trailers a 12-hour day to clean it off and stockpile the contents. The cost was about €1,800 for the contractor and the woodchip cost about €2,800 in addition to the €2,800 of woodchip put on in mid-November.

So far, calving is going relatively well. The Jersey-sired calves are popping out of the heifers with little difficulty. Tom was present for the three cows that calved yesterday afternoon – two heifers that had most of the work done themselves, but Tom applied the ropes to finish the process. The third was a cow with the calf coming backwards so, quick as a flash, Tom had the calf out and while the calf had some fluids in the lungs he was able to get up and shake himself off.

Earlier in the day, Tom had a delivery and the cleanings smothered the calf so he wasn’t as lucky. There are the usual run of health issues – two or three cases of milk fever, a right- and left-displaced abomasum, the odd case of mastitis, the odd retained cleaning, etc.

The milking cows are out on grass going into leafy green covers (less than 1,000kg) and, this week, they are in one of the driest paddocks in the farm. It is a paddock that came into grass from continuous tillage three years, so organic matter is low and there is a nice hard skin in the paddock. A lot of the other paddocks that were converted seven years ago now have a much softer skin on top and are easier damaged.