Clement Twomey hosted a Teagasc/Dairygold farm walk on Friday. Overlooking the convergence of the Blackwater and Funshion rivers at Kilworth in Co Cork, and at the back gates to Moorepark, most of the 48ha milking block is good dry land, but like everywhere else, current grazing conditions are very tough.

Production per cow in 2015 was 503kg milk solids (MS) per cow and 1,307kg MS/ha. Just over 800kg of meal was fed per cow and 14.6t/ha of grass was grown on the platform. Outside blocks are used to rear the youngstock. Winter feed comes from the home farm. The 62 heifer calves and 48 maiden heifers will be kept on 27ha. Herd EBI is high at €193, just outside of the top 50 highest EBI herds in the country.

Fertility

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The importance of good fertility was a key message from the walk. The Twomeys have an established herd of mature cows that are well managed by Clement. A good fertility sub-index on its own doesn’t guarantee good fertility. The Twomey herd of black and white cows has a fertility sub index of €111. This year, 92% of the herd calved in six weeks and calving lasted for nine weeks. Last year, 95% of the herd was submitted for AI in the first three weeks and 99% in the first six weeks, 69% held to first service and just 4% were not in calf after 11 weeks of breeding.

With such a tight calving spread, Clement was asked how he copes in February. “There’s no doubt but the first six weeks are very busy. Eileen rears the calves with help from myself and Jack, who works on the farm. Over the last few years we have invested in facilities to make life easier. A new calving shed was built a few years ago that can hold 15 or 20 cows. A new calf shed was built right next to it in 2014 and an automatic calf feeder was bought also so that has taken a lot of the hardship away.

We also breed for calving ease. Only two cows were jacked this year. I try to use bulls less than 2% calving difficulty and nothing over 2.5%. I do get up during the night but I rarely intervene. I find the loose shed great for cows as they are much more relaxed, especially the heifers. At the next milking the cow is taken away and the calf is slipped through the sliding door and into the calf shed.”

“Cows get lots of time between calving and the start of AI to correct themselves. We start breeding on 24 April and do AI for five weeks and then let off bulls for another five weeks. By the June bank holiday the silage should be done and the bulls let off so we can relax a bit then,” Clement said.

Clement’s profit monitor results for 2015 were presented at the farm walk. Including 5.44c/l (€40,000) for Eileen and Clement’s labour on top of hired labour, total costs before capital repayments and taxation was 24.73c/l in 2015. Output in 2015 was 33.15c/l, excluding the Basic Payment.

Full report will be in next week’s Irish Farmers Journal.