Last week on my way down from Dublin to Kerry I called into two farms and heard presentations from two companies looking to help farmers make farming life easier and more productive.

My first stop was the Greenfield farm in Kilkenny. There I walked around the farm to see the herd and grass etc. The cows were going into heavy covers (2,500kg) but the quality of grass was still very good.

In early September Tom Lyng and Eoin Finneran had decided to introduce round baled silage into the diet to slow the demand for grass as growth rates crashed or at least were on the way down. The last of the bag nitrogen went out about two weeks before the mid-September deadline and when it was washed in with a drop of rain there was a good response.

It turned out to be a very good decision to feed in late August/early September and to get the nitrogen out early. It’s simple stuff – walking the farm and then reacting to what you see and adhering to targets that have been set.

I know many farmers that said: “Okay, it’s dry but look I have plenty of grass – I’ll graze away and the growth will come.” However, the drop of rain never arrived for some to boost growth. The result is you will either have to dry off a lot more cows prematurely or you have to feed a lot more than planned in the autumn.

Yes, there was a cost to the Greenfield decision (labour and hassle to feed out 70 round bales over a 14-day period). However, the payback has been very good. The farm this week has a cover of 1,250kg (500/LU) and despite little or no rain there is plenty of grass around the farm. A mix of nitrogen, potash and good management plays a big part in ensuring you have enough grass and hit autumn farm targets.

Herd fertility

The herd was scanned last week and 30 cows (10%) were deemed not in calf after 13 weeks of breeding.

Over 80% of the herd will be calved in the first two months next spring. This is similar to other years but Tom said that, given some of the challenges during the breeding season and the fact that figure was achieved with no stock bulls around the farm, he is happy enough.

It is always sickening to see nice cows scan empty, but such is the system and why it is important to have your crop of quality heifers coming in.

Most of the 36 cows empty in Kilkenny were either late-calving cows or were early-calving and had plenty of chances to go in calf but for one reason or another they didn’t stay in calf. Milk yield this week is 14.5 litres per cow at 5.10% fat and 4.10% protein (1.37kg MS/cow).

Dairy Direct

After my Kilkenny visit I met up with Kathryn and Brian Kenneally from Dairy Direct, who this week at the Ploughing will be selling a new device which will allow a farmer individually test a milk sample for somatic cell count (SCC). In a matter of seconds after you take the sample from the cow, the device will flash up a figure (1.5 million SCC, or whatever the result is). It will also tell you the type of bug responsible for the infection.

Kathryn tells me the next upgrade, due in early 2015, will also allow you find out the fat and protein percentage of the sample and whether a cow is pregnant or not.

The device is manufactured in Canada and all development is ongoing there.

Kathryn said: “The SCC result is instant and accurate and will tell you the type of bug very quickly which means management and treatment of problem cows will improve greatly.”

This device, if it proves accurate, is a modern day CMT kit with the added benefit of allowing you identify the infection agent.

I asked Kathryn was she confident that the results would be accurate and she said: “The manufacturers tell me the result will be within 4 to 5%.”

How it works

You need three pieces of equipment – the device, an iPhone or iPod and individual plastic discs that hold the milk sample.

The device works in tandem with an iPhone because there is an app you need to download to display the results. If you don’t have an iPhone you could purchase an iPod for about €200 to do the same job.

For each sample, you need an individual disc. A small drop of milk is poured into the disc and then it is slotted into the device. The SCC result almost immediately pops up on the screen of the iPhone that is inserted into the device. Again, almost straight away the results of the pathogen or the cause of the infection is shown.

Cost

Kathryn said to purchase the device itself costs €1,500 + VAT and then the discs for each sample will cost €2.40 each. The special iPhone app costs €20 to download.

Who are Dairy Direct?

Dairy direct sell a range of dairy products, such as dairy detergents etc, over the phone, to farmers and groups of farmers all over Ireland.

Moomonitor+

Moomonitor and Dairymaster had the EU Commissioner for Research and Development Maire Geoghegan Quinn down in Causeway, Co Kerry, last week to launch a new device.

The device, called Moomonitor+, monitors when a cow is in heat, as well as when it is ruminating, feeding, resting, and walking.

These features set this device apart from previous heat detection devices.

Dairymaster CEO Edmund Harty explained the fertility (heat detection) part of this device has more advanced data analysis than anything else on the market and the range of coverage is much improved from previous devices.

He said: “The device covers an area 1,000 times greater in range than current systems on the market.

“We use rumination and resting as indicators of health. Rumination tells us how the cow is feeling and adequate resting times indicate contentment and health. However, excessive resting time can also indicate illness. We have systems built that will send alerts to the farmer’s phone if a cow spends more time lying than normal or less time ruminating etc.”

All information collected from the neck collar is fed to the cloud and stored there (not on a phone or laptop). Any relevant information or alerts are sent to an app on your phone. The device allows two-way communication, removing the need for you to go back to your computer.

Dairymaster software engineer Michael Ryan said the next technological revolution in the banking industry is contact-less credit card payments. He said: “Dairymaster are already using this technology in Moomonitor+. When you are putting a collar on a cow, you can swipe the Moomonitor + with a compatible phone and instantly that collar is linked to that cow.”

Other features of the new device are reduced power consumption (with a battery life of up to 10 years) as well as more data and information allowing much quicker decisions and more accuracy.

The cost

The retail cost of the Moomonitor+ technology is €140 per collar purchased and €4,500 for the base station. After that there is a €5 per cow per year charge for Dairymaster to manage the cloud monitoring system.

Kiskeam drainage

On my way back up the country from Kerry I called to see a farmer in Kiskeam who had completed two drainage and reseeding jobs costing over €1,000 per acre on paddocks beside his parlour.

Over the last year and a half this farmer has spent over €20,000 on drainage alone, improving over 16 acres that his milking cows can walk into. During the very wet 2012 and hungry spring of 2013, purchasing feed had cost this farmer a huge amount of money – so much so that the farmer was questioning whether the farm was viable or not.

The drainage job was relatively simple – essentially the farmer had installed stone collector drains running across a slope and then had pulled naked mole drains up and down the hill which are intercepted with collector drains.

The clay near the surface is heavy and poor-draining so the mole drains allow water off the surface and into the collector drains.

This year has been a fantastic year to grow grass on all land so the drainage hasn’t really been tested yet. However, the two paddocks in question have grown a huge amount of grass this year alone to allow silage stocks build up.

Investment quandary

It is easy to make a case for all four investments that I have described above. They all have a place and all offer value. However, over the next 10 years dairy farmers all over Ireland will be faced with decisions on whether to invest in technology such as that described above or in the fundamental cows, drainage and soil fertility issues that make farms tick with profit.

What gets priority is down to stage of development on individual farms. I have no problem saying investing in cows and grass can give a far higher return than any technology, no matter how good, depending on the stage of development of the farm. Cows and grass are your core profit-producing assets and without them working profitably, you will have no margin for any other investments.

Like a child in a sweet shop, it would be nice to have everything. However, financing all these investments won’t be possible on all farms. Make a plan about what you need to invest in and what it needs to deliver before spending a bob.