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Cavan dairy farmer Charles Clarke has been planning a new milking parlour for a long time. However, like many other dairy farmers, an investment like this often gets put on the long finger when other opportunities come along. Earlier this year, Charles finalised the purchase of 25ac that came up for sale, adjoining land he has on an out-farm near his farm at Bailieborough.
At the moment, between bringing cows in, milking and washing down, the whole milking process takes up to three hours morning and evening. In the spring, when yield was higher, it was taking four hours.
This year, Charles is milking 148 cows and thus there are 19 rows in the eight unit parlour. He is just finalising a planning application for a new milking parlour, which he hopes to complete in the first half of 2021. Charles has a TAMS grant approved for the milking equipment.
Like all dairy businesses, there are still a couple of moving parts to be squared off before it’s finalised, but at some stage, you just have to go with it. “Hopefully, this will be an investment for the next 20 years and we will also increase slurry storage and cubicles,” Charles said.
“At this stage, we have no choice in the matter, as there isn’t much time for anything else outside of milking in the day.”
The core investment will be a 20 unit parlour, dairy, a collecting yard and an exit race with drafting.
The site for construction is limited, given the nature of the existing farmyard. There are two potential sites – one out front, effectively on the top of a hill and another set further back in the farmyard.
The front of yard site would entail a lot of deep rock digging compared to the backyard site, which is the opposite and falls away down a hill.
The backyard site will need retaining walls, which will add to cost, but less digging out will be required. Neither site is ideal and will add construction cost compared to a level site, but this is common on many farmyards in this part of the country.
Charles has settled on the backyard site, as it makes more sense in terms of cow entry, exit and positioning relative to the dwelling house. The frontyard site can then be used for extending the cubicle shed.
He is planning to try and minimise rock digging by building more slurry capacity into a collecting yard tank below the parlour, where the land falls away.
The plan is to leave this tank uncovered behind the parlour. The issue with this is that he would lose nearly three foot in tank capacity on paper, so instead of the nine foot tank, he’d have a six foot deep tank on paper.
According to the Nitrate Directive rules, Cavan gets 27 mm of rainfall per week and this must be retained for a 22 week storage period. Cavan and Monaghan have the longest storage period – at 22 weeks (Zone D).
Performance
The herd is slightly behind on milk solids sold to-date this year, with just seven kilos of milk solids per cow behind on average versus the same time last year. The herd are on track to deliver 415kg of milk solids per cow, stocked at 3.3 cows/ha and on about 750kg of meal fed per cow/year.
Charles puts this down to the fact there are 50 first-calving heifers, 20 second-calvers and 37-third calvers in the 148 milkers. Young cows will only produce 70% to 85% of mature production.
Fat and protein percentage are well up, as better breeding decisions are now beginning to flow into the bulk tank. It will only get better as the herd matures.
This time last year, protein was 3.51% and fat 4.11%. Protein percentage at the moment is 3.82% and fat percentage is 4.67%. The annual average for last year was 3.52% protein and 4.17% fat, but Charles expects this to be much improved for 2020.
While percentages are up, volume is back relative to other years – but that is to be expected given the age structure in the herd.
It’s been a good grass year in Cavan and Charles is expecting to hit over 13.5t of grass grown per hectare on the milking block. Torrential rain hit the top half of the country last week, which made grazing conditions very difficult for a few days, but things have improved since.
Charles was beginning to get the last of the urea out last week, but had to hold off for a few days while the farm dried out. He has some third-cut still to do on an outside farm, but was hopeful the weather would allow him gather that up this week. There is plenty of feed in stock on all farms locally.
Charles reckons fertility performance will be good, but hasn’t done a final scan yet. He did a nine week scan in early July to pick up the last of the cows not in-calf and reckoned it was a good move. Herd health is excellent so far this year. He didn’t lose any cows and only a few calves at calving.
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