Family partnership overlooking the Shannon estuary

Overlooking the Shannon Estuary at Killimer in Co Clare lies the Culligan farm. Pat, Marian and Brian are farming in a three-way partnership milking 50 cows on free-draining land.

The EBI of the Holstein Friesian herd is €222 with this year’s crop of heifer calves jumping to an EBI of €342. All AI is used on both cows and heifers.

There is no stock bull but a strong Friesian calf is retained and then vasectomised and he is used to help pick up heifers and cows that are bulling using a chin-ball harness.

Great progress has been made over the last number of years with land purchased, a new cubicle shed built and the herd doubling in size from 26 cows in 2016.

The most recent investment has been to a new milking parlour with a six aside Dairymaster double-up put in last May which is as clean now as it was the day it was put in.

This is the third Dairymaster parlour to be installed on the farm with the first plant installed in the late 1970s.

Brian finished his green cert in 2015 and credits his technical skills on the experience he gained while out on work placement with fellow Clare farmers Danny Bermingham and Andrew Killeen.

He measures grass weekly and while he says it would sometimes be easier not to do, farming is a lot harder without the knowledge of having completed a grass walk.

Brian says cows go out to grass by day on 10 February and are out full-time in March. He says protein per cent is running behind this year because of all the wet weather earlier in spring and because the good silage ran out.

The Culligans complete five milk recordings per year and use this information when deciding on what cows can get selective dry cow therapy. The somatic cell count is excellent, averaging 95,000 for last year and just 18 cows got treated with antibiotics at the last drying off.

The family is enrolled in the ACRES environmental scheme and has planted 400m of whitethorn hedging as part of it along with five acres of traditional hay meadows. Soil samples are taken every second year and this determines the fertiliser plan.

All the slurry is applied with low-emission slurry spreading techniques with umbilical pipes used in spring and their own tanker is used for the rest of the year.