The 280 cow dairy herd on the Buchanan family farm is managed on the principle of keeping everything as simple as possible and minimizing the workload.

“We look to get cows out to grass as early as we can in spring and utilise as much forage as possible to control costs” said Ian Buchanan during his opening remarks at the Ulster Grassland Society spring dairy meeting.

The current dairy unit was built on a green field site 11 years ago and has cubicle space for 300 cows, plus dry cow and calving facilities.

Cows are milked through a 60 point rotary parlour with automatic cluster removal, wash cycle and feed to yield. All cows can be milked by one person in under 90 minutes.

“Our home farm is seven miles away, where we had been milking 80 cows. But there was no scope for expansion beyond the facilities we had at that time.

The farm at Burnfoot came on to the market in 2005 and was purchased. A second land block was added a few years after, giving us 140 acres of owned land in one block.

We rent an extra 20 acres, giving us 160 acres for grazing. Construction started for the new dairy unit and the first cows milked on the new unit in 2012.”

Calving

The herd is managed by Ian and his wife Pamela although their two sons, Daniel and Jonny have taken more of a leading role in recent years. There is also a full-time student, Molly McLaughlin, working on the unit this year.

The 280 cows start calving around mid-October and finish up around 1 March. Calving beyond this date, or moving to a spring calving profile, is not an option according to Ian.

“We also run a large sheep enterprise and are flat out with lambing in April. We need cows to be finished calving in good time to focus on lambing.

With spring calving, there would be too much happening at once. Calving in autumn and winter is much easier for us to manage.”

Cow performance

Average yields sit at around 7,750 litres/cow with 2.4t of concentrate fed, giving approximately 3,000 litres of milk from forage. Butterfat is normally around 4.2%, with protein at 3.33%.

Cows are crossbred animals using Holstein and Viking Red genetics. The top 50% of cows in the herd are bred to AI using sexed semen to produce replacements.

Heat detection is aided by collars and cows ready for serving are automatically separated by a shedding gate once they exit the parlour.

Eight weeks after breeding starts, cows are only served using beef semen, with Angus being the preferred breed of choice. AI stops once cows go to grass and beef stock bulls are introduced to sweep up.

The farm runs 280 crossbred cows on a 160 acre grazing platform.

Weather depending, once cows go to grass, the aim is to graze for 180 days before housing.

All calves born on-farm are retained. Around 70 to 75 heifers are reared annually for herd replacements and calve down at 24 months of age.

The remaining calves are reared on the home farm, rather than compete with lactating cows for grass on the grazing platform around the dairy unit.

These animals are then sold as stores, or taken through to slaughter, depending on whether the herd is under movement restrictions.

Last year, 50 Wagyu calves were born on farm and are being taken through to slaughter. “The jury is out on these calves so far” said Ian.

Grazing

Land quality is relatively good, but does require careful management in wet conditions to avoid damaging swards.

To keep things nice and simple during the grazing season, cows are run as one group. Separate groups for dry and late lactation cows are introduced once housing begins in September.

Roadways have been installed to aid moving cows in and out of paddocks with minimal surface damage occurring around paddock gateways.

“We were having issues with lameness from cows walking on stone laneways, so we put down astroturf and it has made a big difference. The astroturf came out of England and basically cost us the haulage, plus our time to install.”

Astroturf has been installed on laneways to reduce lameness in cows.

Reseeding

Reseeding takes place every year, with grass seed normally stitched in. “We burn off and stitch in new grass, as well as stitching directly in to open swards that have become tired.

Dry ewes are used to keep older grasses and weeds under control until the new swards are established.

We have been stitching in a lot of clover, as well as plantain. Clover is working well, but we still need nitrogen to keep things growing during the early part of the year. Plantain has been less successful.

Between 100t and 200t of lime is applied annually, with fields on a four year rotation. We always apply 0.5t/acre more than what the soil analysis indicates.

We treat our rented ground the same as the land we own, which helps us to retain this ground every year.”

Silage

Silage is made in a three cut system, all harvested from rented land. Each cut takes in approximately 180 acres, although this includes silage for young dairy stock, beef stores and sheep.

Surplus grass is removed from the grazing block during the first rotation, then baled. A separate cut of stronger grass is conserved solely for dry cows.

A contractor applies slurry to silage ground ahead of first cut using an umbilical system. Around 50% of all slurry on the farm is spread using the contractor to ease the workload.

Cows start to go dry around late August, at which point they are housed and moved on to a controlled silage-based diet in the run up to calving.

Once calved, cows then move into a high yielding group and are offered top quality forage to drive yields, with concentrate supplemented at a rate of 0.45kg/litre of milk produced through the parlour.

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