I farm: “I’m currently milking 115 cows in partnership with my mother Agnes. We milk all year round and are probably at the maximum amount of cows that the farm will hold on the 135-acre home farm. We keep Holstein cows that are currently out at grass the whole time but they are also getting a buffer feed when they are in for milking. Cows are averaging about 8,000l/year and the hope is to get over 9,000l in the coming years by making better use of grass and forges.

Grass: “We aim to get cows out to grass on the first week of May and continue grazing until later in September but this really depends on the weather. We have a very good contractor who does the silage and the slurry, I’m very much a stockman. When it comes to winter feed we probably have 75% made so far. The first cut was lighter than we would have liked but the second cut was better than expected. The rain of the past few weeks has really helped third cut and grazing.

Milking facilities: “We recently installed a new 12-unit swingover GEA parlour. Before that we had an eight-stall auto-tandem, with four stalls on each side. Milking was probably taking over six and a half hours a day. With the new parlour it is now taking three hours which is a major difference.

Cow Signals: “I was at a Cow Signals workshop last week which looks at cow behaviour. You see that even if your sheds are a little overcrowded it can pull back production. Sometimes you go to these type of events and you can be told that you need to spend a lot of money which is impractical. Here, there was a focus on things that you can do to improve the herd’s wellbeing and production without big investment. You can make small change that will give big benefits. Even getting rid of eight or 10 passenger cows could mean a lot of progress. I also think I will install an extra 20 or 30 feed trough spaces so that cows have more space and are not fighting to get to the feed face.

Quotable quote: “A lot of people think that the next step is more cows but I think increasing productivity and getting more out of what you have should be the first step.”