The Walsh family hosted a Quality Milk farm walk for Teagasc, Dairygold Co-op, Ornua and the National Dairy Council yesterday. The walk followed the Walshs winning the National Quality Milk Award last September after a nationwide trawl for the best Quality Milk supplier. The search for the 2018 winner started this week and the judges are on the road visiting farms at the moment.

Over 400 farmers from all over Ireland gathered on the south Tipperary family farm to hear messages from all members of the Walsh family. The farm currently has 113 cows with herd performance for 2017 showing milk solids produced at 495kg per cow (1,113kg MS/ha or 5,978 litres per cow).

John is a member of the Galtee Discussion Group and puts a lot of his success down to working with this group of local farmers alongside his Dairygold adviser William Ryan and his local Teagasc adviser Kevin Barron.

Yesterday, John said: “Look, I take quality milk seriously. I almost look at all things around the parlour - the milking procedure and the drying-off procedure - as a surgical procedure because it is food we are producing, not just a dairy commodity.”

The total area farmed is 102ha. In general, land quality is good, free-draining south Tipperary land and yesterday it was clear that the drought was really beginning to take hold of the farm. There are 53ha available to the herd on the platform, with an overall stocking rate of 2.25 LU/ha. The plan is to grow the business in the coming years and milk more cows. Phase-one development of new slurry storage has already started and farmers who visited the walk were able to see the plan on where future cubicles, etc, will go.

The summary quality milk results for 2017 delivered from this farm were TBC of 5,000, an SCC of 77,000 with fat at 4.34% and protein 3.70%.

See next week's Irish Farmers Journal print edition for full coverage and see below from previous reports from this farm.

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