Up until a few years ago, John Keating would be more comfortable behind a round baler, but now his priorities lie closer to home.

Early in his career, John worked off-farm at silage, machinery, beet and tillage, with the 30 milking cows a long way from his mind. In fact, bullocks and fattening cattle were closer to his heart than milking cows.

However, 10 years ago, a new 12-unit parlour was constructed when John only had 40 cows. By 2012, cow numbers were up to 80 and John was still doing a bit of contracting.

The big change came in 2013. John had the opportunity to purchase quota and cows and he decided to go with it.

In 2017, John and full-time employee Tom Barron milked 160 cows, with the help of four extra units to the parlour, bringing it to 16 units.

So from 10 milking cows in 1914, the Keating business has grown similar to the increasing national herd.

All of this means John can only look at balers passing on the road and, instead, he is investing in cow roadways, land, soil fertility and his young stock.

John is maximising the grazing area by walking cows a short distance on a public road towards a parcel of land beside the sea.

Tom does a lot of the milking in the early part of the year, while John is looking after all other issues.

All cows are inspected at milking and lukewarm water is used to wash all cows, followed by stripping. Cluster removers were installed to allow more time for inspection.

Any cow that has infection is removed from the milking herd and, rather than cull them, John often rears calves under any cow that is not up to scratch on cell count or not able for walking to paddocks. John could have 10 to 15 cows in this setup and upwards of 40 calves.

The plant is washed with hot water every second day. Detergent solution is reused once and John descales the plant every second day.

He feels that extra descaling helps keep the plant extremely clean. Organisation is top class and you can see this in the office and store beside the parlour, where everything has a place and is labelled clearly. Good organisation and clearly top-class achievement for this Waterford setup.