You know something feels right before you are halfway up the lane at Graigue. The yard is swept, the roadways run true to every corner of the grazing block, and the cows lift unhurried heads as you pass, the settled calm of a herd that is well handled and well housed.
What you would never guess is that four short years ago there was not a dairy cow in the place.
The Campion family are new entrants to dairying. Until 2021, Paddy Campion ran a well-regarded beef enterprise here on the edge of the Devil’s Bit country; today he and his son Lorcan milk 155 cows on a simple, spring-calving, grass-based system.
It is very much a family enterprise. Paddy and Lorcan farm full time, Ann, Paddy’s wife, now retired, is back in the thick of it every spring for calving and calf care. Sons Michael, John, and Podge lend a hand when they are needed. Michael, a Teagasc adviser, brings a professional eye to the home place, while daughter Miriam completes a household that as well known on the playing field as in the parlour.
Milk quality is where new entrants are most often caught out, and it is where the Campions have the most to be proud of. Somatic cell count has been held consistently low, down into the 50s and 60s of thousands through the spring of 2026, while total bacterial count sits in single figures to the low teens, the mark of a spotless routine in a parlour barely four years old.
In 2025, the herd delivered almost 82,000kg of milk solids, an average of 525kg/cow, figures that speak of grass well grown and cows well fed.
Out in the fields, protected urea, clover in every reseed and excellent soil fertility all reflect a farm run with the low-carbon principles of the Teagasc Signpost Programme in mind.
Some 900m of new hedging has gone in over the past decade, the two watercourses on the farm are fenced well back and mapped for vulnerability, and a walk of the ground frequently shows around 20 bird species and migratory visitors among them.
For all the technology, the goal is refreshingly human: a 40-hour working week, a 6.30am start and a 4.30pm finish, and time left over for the hurling and the camogie that mean so much to this family.
In just four years, the Campions have built what many farmers spend a lifetime chasing, a high-quality, sustainable and genuinely happy family farm.
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