Judges on the Hayes farm are Bryan Doocey, AIB; John Maher, Teagasc; Siobhan Hayes, host farmer; PJ O'Connor, Grassland Agro; Niall Ryan, Department of Agriculture and Mitchel Hayes, host farmer.
Blarney, Co Cork
Siobhan and Mitchel Hayes are milking 270 cows on a 77.6ha milking block at Blarney, not far from Cork city. The Hayes have been measuring and monitoring grass, milk production and finances for years and they are always keen to get the most out of themselves and their farm. Cow numbers peaked at 300 cows this year, which is a stocking rate of 3.86 cows/ha. In 2017, the overall farm stocking rate was 2.8LU/ha, with a 44ha-support block over the road for silage and youngstock.
“I like a high stocking rate, I think we grow more grass and the farm is easier to run, but the risk is a fodder deficit. A high stocking rate this year just didn’t work, we ended up feeding too much supplement so we decided to de-risk the business by selling off cull cows early and selling nearly all of the in-calf heifers. It will mean a 15% drop in cow numbers for next year, but I don’t think production will drop by as much because we will have a more mature herd,” Mitchel says.
The farm grows a lot of grass and by taking action early this year, the farm will have enough winter feed. The average grass yield on the milking platform over the last three years was 15.8t/ha and Mitchel achieves an average of 10.2 grazings per paddock per year. Milk production is also good with the herd of Jersey crossbred cows averaging 480kg of milk solids per cow from 800kg of meal.
Mitchel has 21 paddocks on the farm with multiple access points into each paddock and a good roadway network throughout the farm. He reseeds about 10% of the farm per year and soil samples every two years. Every December, he looks at the paddock performance report and asks himself why the bottom paddocks are at the bottom;
“Is it the number of grazings, sward quality, lack of reseeding or soil fertility that is causing the problem?” he asks. His favourite varieties are Drumbo, Abergain and Aberchoice, with Mitchel opting to use mixes rather than monocultures. He aims to go into covers during the main grazing season of 1,300kg to 1,400kg with at least 60% of the grass plants at the three-leaf stage. His target is to have an average farm cover of 150kg/cow during the main grazing season.
On breeding, Mitchel is an advocate of using proven sires, as he feels genomics are too variable. For the last number of years he has been using Kiwi cross sires on his crossbred cows along with daughter proven New Zealand Friesian and Jersey bulls on his smaller and larger cows respectively.
Sean Kennedy, Dun Sion, Dingle, Co Kerry.
Dingle, Co Kerry
There are lots of unique things about this farm. The first is the location. Nestled in the foothills between the Kerry Mountains and the sea, the scenery is spectacular. The next is the shape of the farm. Sean’s fields are scattered like confetti across the countryside. His farmyard is at inland side of the road while most of his fields are across the road, through the small village of Dun Sion and heading for the sea. But they are not in a line nor in a sequence. Only one or two paddocks are next to each other, the rest are connected by a narrow roadway, built for a horse and cart.
And then there is the farmer. Having spent 14 years working as an aeroplane engineer in Dublin, Sean’s transition to becoming a top dairy farmer on a difficult farm is a great story.
While the farm is difficult to run – it being one of the most fragmented holdings in Ireland – the land type is good. Sean says he can get cows out early and late because most of the land is very free-draining.
Sean is milking 60 cows and rears 13 calves on a 21.4ha-milking block which is a stocking rate of 3LU/ha. The in-calf heifers and silage ground are on a 10ha-support block up the road. Sean is entering the competition under the disadvantaged area section. Average grass growth over the last three years was 12.5t/ha. His herd of Holstein Friesian cows produce 390kg of milk solids per cow from around 650kg of meal fed.
Sean’s target is to grow 16t/ha of grass, but to do so he says he needs to get soil fertility up. Some of his ground is at Index 1 and 2 for P and K. He is targeting this land with more chemical P and K and putting most of the slurry on the outblock, spreading slurry three times per year on the silage fields. This is done by a contractor using a trailing shoe. Index 1 soils get two bags per acre of 18:6:12 and one bag per acre of 10:10:20. Sean spreads urea at the start of the year and a bag of ASN in April.
Because of the fragmented nature of the farm it takes two people to bring in the cows. Calving starts on 20 February and cows usually go to grass on 27 February. Breeding starts on 14 May and this year Sean has an empty rate of 10% after a nine-week and one day breeding season. He buys 40 dairy AI straws and when they are gone he uses beef AI. He has 10 in-calf heifers and 13 heifer calves.
John Raggett, Stoneyford, Co Kilkenny.
Stoneyford, Co Kilkenny
John Raggett has been a full-time farmer for the past 20 years. Over that time he has grown the herd from 40 cows to the 72 cows being milked today. He has done this by gradually replacing beef cattle with milking cows. His 23ha-milking block is now stocked at 3.27 cows/ha and John believes this is the sweet spot. He has no interest in milking any more cows as the present farm size creates the income and lifestyle that he desires.
Performance on this Kilkenny holding is impressive. The black and white cows sold 555kg of milk solids per cow last year from 850kg of meal per cow. The farm grew 15.4t/ha on average over the last three years. The Raggett farm is very dry and very close to rock. There is so much rock that John can’t drive proper fence posts, instead he has small pencil stakes in the ground with wire tied on to them and insulated using strips from a plastic fertiliser bag.
John has two outblocks used for heifers and silage. He is farming 44ha in total, with two bulls, 19 heifer calves and 20 in-calf heifers. The yard layout is simple and user-friendly. He constructed a simple feed pad on the way into the milking parlour, which he was using to feed bale silage and soya hulls when the judges called. John burned up badly in the drought but luckily for him and the other contestants they are not being judged on 2018 grass growth.
John has been grass measuring for the past 12 years and says it’s the best thing he has ever done. He reseeds about 8ac of the milking platform per year. He starts grazing after the first 20 cows are calved and targets to graze 40% of the farm in February with the remainder grazed in March before the start of the second round on 1 April.
Like most of the farmers the judges visited John is a practitioner of early nitrogen, spreading 30kg/ha of nitrogen in the form of urea in January. He goes with 18:6:12 in March and spreads slurry on all paddocks grazed in February. Over the summer months he goes with one unit of nitrogen per day. He spreads 62kg/ha of potash on low K fields and silage fields in the autumn.
Breeding performance was excellent this year with just 5.4% of the cows not in calf after 12 weeks of breeding.
Judges on the Hayes farm are Bryan Doocey, AIB; John Maher, Teagasc; Siobhan Hayes, host farmer; PJ O'Connor, Grassland Agro; Niall Ryan, Department of Agriculture and Mitchel Hayes, host farmer.
Blarney, Co Cork
Siobhan and Mitchel Hayes are milking 270 cows on a 77.6ha milking block at Blarney, not far from Cork city. The Hayes have been measuring and monitoring grass, milk production and finances for years and they are always keen to get the most out of themselves and their farm. Cow numbers peaked at 300 cows this year, which is a stocking rate of 3.86 cows/ha. In 2017, the overall farm stocking rate was 2.8LU/ha, with a 44ha-support block over the road for silage and youngstock.
“I like a high stocking rate, I think we grow more grass and the farm is easier to run, but the risk is a fodder deficit. A high stocking rate this year just didn’t work, we ended up feeding too much supplement so we decided to de-risk the business by selling off cull cows early and selling nearly all of the in-calf heifers. It will mean a 15% drop in cow numbers for next year, but I don’t think production will drop by as much because we will have a more mature herd,” Mitchel says.
The farm grows a lot of grass and by taking action early this year, the farm will have enough winter feed. The average grass yield on the milking platform over the last three years was 15.8t/ha and Mitchel achieves an average of 10.2 grazings per paddock per year. Milk production is also good with the herd of Jersey crossbred cows averaging 480kg of milk solids per cow from 800kg of meal.
Mitchel has 21 paddocks on the farm with multiple access points into each paddock and a good roadway network throughout the farm. He reseeds about 10% of the farm per year and soil samples every two years. Every December, he looks at the paddock performance report and asks himself why the bottom paddocks are at the bottom;
“Is it the number of grazings, sward quality, lack of reseeding or soil fertility that is causing the problem?” he asks. His favourite varieties are Drumbo, Abergain and Aberchoice, with Mitchel opting to use mixes rather than monocultures. He aims to go into covers during the main grazing season of 1,300kg to 1,400kg with at least 60% of the grass plants at the three-leaf stage. His target is to have an average farm cover of 150kg/cow during the main grazing season.
On breeding, Mitchel is an advocate of using proven sires, as he feels genomics are too variable. For the last number of years he has been using Kiwi cross sires on his crossbred cows along with daughter proven New Zealand Friesian and Jersey bulls on his smaller and larger cows respectively.
Sean Kennedy, Dun Sion, Dingle, Co Kerry.
Dingle, Co Kerry
There are lots of unique things about this farm. The first is the location. Nestled in the foothills between the Kerry Mountains and the sea, the scenery is spectacular. The next is the shape of the farm. Sean’s fields are scattered like confetti across the countryside. His farmyard is at inland side of the road while most of his fields are across the road, through the small village of Dun Sion and heading for the sea. But they are not in a line nor in a sequence. Only one or two paddocks are next to each other, the rest are connected by a narrow roadway, built for a horse and cart.
And then there is the farmer. Having spent 14 years working as an aeroplane engineer in Dublin, Sean’s transition to becoming a top dairy farmer on a difficult farm is a great story.
While the farm is difficult to run – it being one of the most fragmented holdings in Ireland – the land type is good. Sean says he can get cows out early and late because most of the land is very free-draining.
Sean is milking 60 cows and rears 13 calves on a 21.4ha-milking block which is a stocking rate of 3LU/ha. The in-calf heifers and silage ground are on a 10ha-support block up the road. Sean is entering the competition under the disadvantaged area section. Average grass growth over the last three years was 12.5t/ha. His herd of Holstein Friesian cows produce 390kg of milk solids per cow from around 650kg of meal fed.
Sean’s target is to grow 16t/ha of grass, but to do so he says he needs to get soil fertility up. Some of his ground is at Index 1 and 2 for P and K. He is targeting this land with more chemical P and K and putting most of the slurry on the outblock, spreading slurry three times per year on the silage fields. This is done by a contractor using a trailing shoe. Index 1 soils get two bags per acre of 18:6:12 and one bag per acre of 10:10:20. Sean spreads urea at the start of the year and a bag of ASN in April.
Because of the fragmented nature of the farm it takes two people to bring in the cows. Calving starts on 20 February and cows usually go to grass on 27 February. Breeding starts on 14 May and this year Sean has an empty rate of 10% after a nine-week and one day breeding season. He buys 40 dairy AI straws and when they are gone he uses beef AI. He has 10 in-calf heifers and 13 heifer calves.
John Raggett, Stoneyford, Co Kilkenny.
Stoneyford, Co Kilkenny
John Raggett has been a full-time farmer for the past 20 years. Over that time he has grown the herd from 40 cows to the 72 cows being milked today. He has done this by gradually replacing beef cattle with milking cows. His 23ha-milking block is now stocked at 3.27 cows/ha and John believes this is the sweet spot. He has no interest in milking any more cows as the present farm size creates the income and lifestyle that he desires.
Performance on this Kilkenny holding is impressive. The black and white cows sold 555kg of milk solids per cow last year from 850kg of meal per cow. The farm grew 15.4t/ha on average over the last three years. The Raggett farm is very dry and very close to rock. There is so much rock that John can’t drive proper fence posts, instead he has small pencil stakes in the ground with wire tied on to them and insulated using strips from a plastic fertiliser bag.
John has two outblocks used for heifers and silage. He is farming 44ha in total, with two bulls, 19 heifer calves and 20 in-calf heifers. The yard layout is simple and user-friendly. He constructed a simple feed pad on the way into the milking parlour, which he was using to feed bale silage and soya hulls when the judges called. John burned up badly in the drought but luckily for him and the other contestants they are not being judged on 2018 grass growth.
John has been grass measuring for the past 12 years and says it’s the best thing he has ever done. He reseeds about 8ac of the milking platform per year. He starts grazing after the first 20 cows are calved and targets to graze 40% of the farm in February with the remainder grazed in March before the start of the second round on 1 April.
Like most of the farmers the judges visited John is a practitioner of early nitrogen, spreading 30kg/ha of nitrogen in the form of urea in January. He goes with 18:6:12 in March and spreads slurry on all paddocks grazed in February. Over the summer months he goes with one unit of nitrogen per day. He spreads 62kg/ha of potash on low K fields and silage fields in the autumn.
Breeding performance was excellent this year with just 5.4% of the cows not in calf after 12 weeks of breeding.
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