Last week, Cappamore dairy farmer Padraig Ryan completed a drainage and reseeding job on a five-acre field close to his milking parlour. Field by field, he has been reclaiming and reseeding for the last six years. Padraig estimates the cost of this job came close to €2,000/acre – not counting the fact he did a lot of the work himself.

If Padraig didn’t do any of the work himself, he would have to budget between €3,000/acre and €3,500/acre.

“It’s valuable [land] to me here, right beside my parlour where cows can walk into the field 10 times per year. What’s the point in me spending money now to rent land 10 miles away for €300/acre, when long-term I’ll have this land outside my front door. I believe I need to get my own land growing as much grass as possible, and then I can assess the state of play in terms of renting land away from the parlour for heifers or silage, etc. I already have 20 owned acres away from the farm, that again need development before I go renting more land,” says Padraig.

He installed two metre deep drains every 20 metres across the field, to catch the water springs that were breaking out in the field. These field drains are feeding into a deep drain that surrounds the field, which falls down the hill.

A two-inch yellow corrugated drainage pipe is covered to a depth of 12 to 16 inches with very small stone (pea gravel) and then the drain is back-filled with soil up to field level. Is it necessary to go so deep?

“All the field drainage that I have done here is at that depth. You have to get down into the permeable layer to get the water out of the field. Every drain is different, but principles need to be established for each field at the outset. Essentially, I’m tapping the water springs that are breaking out in the side of the hill. Drain depth depends on a number of things, but I’d have no problem creating small sumps in the field, allowing water to build up in the sump and then tapping a pipe from that out to the side of the field. As the farm is on the side of a hill we have a good outflow from the field, but most fields have an outflow even though they may look relatively flat. I’m lucky enough to be a water diviner, so I peg out the line of the drain each time.”

Padraig runs the drain across the slope, but tilted slightly down the hill. You don’t run field drains up and down the hill. Instead, you go across to catch and divert the water out to the side of the field as early as you can.

Padraig’s herd EBI is €151 and this has gradually increased the quality of the herd since 2008, when he took the decision to focus on developing a dairy herd and to get rid of his suckler cows.

At the time, he had a half dairy, half suckler enterprise, but decided to retrain. He was chosen as a monitor farmer from 2011 to 2013 in the Dairygold monitor programme and says he benefitted greatly from the experience.