The most recent report from the Greenfield farm in Kilkenny is printed this week in the weekly print edition (see link below).

Since then, the most recent milk results from the last milk collection were made available online.

In fairness, Glanbia Connect have a very good online system where suppliers can log in and see all results. Farmers can download results for the last week, month or year and use them as they wish.

It is a great system when I see what some other milk suppliers supplying some other processors get in the line of information which is often a week or 10 days later if they are lucky.

The Thursday collection from the farm shows that 1,267kg of milk solids were collected. The fat and protein are remaining consistent at 5.3% fat and 4.46% protein. Lactose is 4.71% and somatic cell count is 164 cells/ml. TBC was six and the Thermoduric result was 60.

There are 283 cows milking but David has had up to five cows out of the tank for the last number of weeks. It means the herd is averaging about 1.5 to 1.55kg of milk solids per day on 2.5kg of meal and good-quality grazed grass.

One query I got since the print article was what other capital expenditure is planned that wasn’t mentioned in print. There are a number of small jobs like sorting out a part of the soil bank near the cubicles, getting power down to the calf shed, potentially installing some system to pump milk down to the calf shed and replacing water troughs, etc.

The meal bin had to be moved towards the front of the parlour for the feeder augers rather than turn around the corner. There will undoubtedly be other bits and pieces of maintenance as the year goes on.

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