The Irish Farmers Journal featured the Heffernan family’s large cubicle shed in the farm buildings section last October. The shed was 18 bays long and had over 160 cubicle spaces. The impressive infrastructure on the Heffernan farm doesn’t stop there – they also have a remarkable dairy parlour and drafting area enclosed in a large dairy structure.

The Heffernan dairy enterprise is run by a three-man show at the moment, comprising of Billy Heffernan and his two sons, Mark and Liam. The Heffernans invested a lot of money in the parlour and drafting area because they are expanding cow numbers and were focused on ease of management for the increasing numbers.

“We hope to milk over 400 cows by 2018, so we viewed the parlour as one of the main areas to get right to make management straightforward for two people,” explained Mark.

“Some people ask why we built such a large shed, but we see it as a complete cow management unit that is used for 10 months of the year,” he said. This year, on average, a milking just took one and a half hours for the 300-cow herd.

The collecting yard is very large on the farm, measuring 30m by 15.5m, and it can hold the 300 cows comfortably, with space for 30 more. At the entrance to the collecting yard, there is a 20m long, 5m wide and 3m deep slurry tank. The slurry that accumulates on the collecting yard is scraped back to this tank. The hydraulically driven slurry scraper was supplied by Dairymaster and the backing gate is connected to the scraper.

When cows enter the collecting yard, the gates are on rollers and simply slide open and closed again when every cow is inside. The backing gate keeps the cows moving towards the mouth of the parlour as numbers in the collecting yard decline during milking. The blades on the scraping system are suspended above the concrete when the system is moving towards the parlour. They then drop and come in contact with the concrete floor when the scrapers are moving back towards the entrance of the collecting yard where the slurry tank is situated.

There is a covered channel built into the floor of the collecting yard just in front of the slurry tank that is opened to collect rainwater when the yard is clean and not in use. This prevents the slurry tank filling up with water.

The dairy parlour and drafting area are situated in the main structure. A 36-unit rapid-exit Dairymaster parlour was used here, with swing-over arms and cluster flush.

“We decided on a rapid-exit parlour instead of a rotary because we felt more contact and time could be spent observing individual cows. With a rotary parlour, the clusters go on and next thing she is gone from sight, also this system was more cost-effective,” explained Mark.

On entering the parlour, each cow has their own stall. There are milk meters installed and each cow has an electronic Department tag which is used to identify cows for drafting.

The system can read which stall a cow enters. If a cow is identified during milking to be in heat, one of the milkers can press a button on the corresponding control box so she will be drafted later.

Cows are also identified during heat detection in the paddocks. Their numbers are noted and loaded into the computer system before milking for drafting. Once milked, the bailing lifts and the feed troughs move forward and upwards.

This leaves an unobstructed exit for cows to the drafting area. In a matter of seconds, the bailing drops again and more cows file into line again. A 5,000l air compressor drives the lifting action of the bailing.

When milked cows enter the handling area, which comprises of a crush, drafting crate, footbath and holding pens, two 360° pivot gates allow cows to be directed to different sections of the handling area.

For a TB test or administration of animal health products, cows can be directed into the crush. The crush holds 13 to 14 cows and there is an automatic headgate at the end which is useful for dosing cows. The Dairymaster drafting crate reads each cows tag and directs any identified cows to the left into a holding pen.

Normally, cows move straight through the drafting crate through the race and back outside to the road.

For cleaning, the drafting area has two sewage channels made out of halved plastic drainage piping that is set in concrete with steel frames on top for strength.

During the breeding season, when milking is complete, there are usually a number of cows waiting in the holding pen after drafting ready to be artificially inseminated. The specially designed AI crush is set at a 10° angle so cows line up in a similar way as they do the parlour.

Usually, once the first cow enters this crush, the rest line up beside her. A clamp designed by the Heffernans that follows the direction of the crush bars is used to hold cows in place during insemination.

This is useful if there is a small number of cows to be serviced. The top bar at the rear of the AI crush is on a hinge and can be dropped to allow more space to work with cows.

A two-way gate at the end of the race is useful to change the cows’ exit route towards the footbath. The footbath has two 9ft-long sections.

The first section just contains water to help clean off cows’ hooves before they enter the next section which holds the footbath mixture.

The footbath is designed so that each hoof is submerged in each section twice. There is a plug in the bottom of the footbath so it can be emptied easily and quickly.

Building work

The penning, crush, race, etc, was purchased as raw lengths of steel and welded and fabricated by the Heffernans themselves, with the help of a neighbour who is a welder by trade. They then brought the panels to Galco to get them galvanised.

The Heffernans bought the shed frame from a dismantled warehouse in the UK and Dunvale Engineering erected it with new purlins and new non-drip sheeting.

They did the concrete work on the flat themselves – neighbours helped with bigger pours. Matt and Michael Bergin from Lisdowney shuttered and poured the walls.