Ailbe and Denise Ryan from Cappawhite, Co Tipperary, have won Arrabawn Co-op's supplier of the year award.
They milk 125 pedigree Holstein cows on 190ac, supplying 1m litres and selling 20 surplus in-calf heifers every year.
The farm converted from beef to dairy in 2010 after selling development land to buy good-quality land.
“I decided there was only one way forward if I wanted to stay farming and that was dairy," said Ailbe, himself from a dairy farm.
"We started milking 70 heifers in spring in 2010. We moved slowly. We didn't jump too deep at any stage."
Hygiene focus
The farmer said he paid constant attention to hygiene, using teat dip and paper towels on every cow, but never water, and scraping out cows' cubicles manually twice a day and liming through the dry period.
The farm's average cell count for the year was 100,000 and its TBC was typically 5,000, he added.
“Every farmer should be milk recording, because you don't know what you're doing if you're not.
"If my results show I have a cow with a high cell count, I sample them straight away and isolate the problem and put the fire out before it starts," said Ailbe.
'Carbon quota'
While he believes farming can be done sustainably, he said farmers "have to work on it".
"Probably we are looking at a carbon quota. How farming is going to fit into the environment in the next number of years would be my biggest concern."
From 125 cows, any expansion would mean an additional labour unit and a jump to 180 or 190 cows to support that.
"That, for me, is not the way forward," Ailbe said.
Denise works full-time on the farms and their children "help out massively as well".
They focus on spending time with their cows and with each other as a family, with as much tractor work contracted out as possible.
Co-op model
Ailbe said Arrabawn's co-op model suited him, with investment into expansion remaining within the control of farmers.
"I have seen the bigger ones get too big and the power goes out of the farmers’ hands.
"Some people would say Ireland should have only two dairy co-ops, but I'd feel the opposite. I'd rather have a good number of co-ops," he said.
SHARING OPTIONS