For years, farmers have been milk recording but very often the detail contained in the results has never been acted on. Often, the daunting task of going through the reams of individual cow results has prevented farmers using the information properly. Under a new initiative, farmers are set to get a very different display of milk recording results this year. In the new reports, the milk recording agencies will complete some of the work for the farmer by segregating the herd on milk production (profit/cow) and somatic cell count.

Spring-calving farmers will soon be getting these reports in the post. So what’s different? This week, I met Rosarii O’Connor from Munster Cattle Breeding Group, Mary Buckley from Kerry Agribusiness and dairy farmer Thomas Laffan from near Boher, Co Limerick, to discuss the new reports.

The front page of the new results page shows how the herd is categorised. On production, the herd will be split into – best performers (most profitable), average performers (profitable) and low performers (not profitable).

You need to know costs and output values to be able to split them on profit. The question then is, what is the cost of production on the farm and what is the milk price used? Two assumptions are made in these reports – the cost of production (excluding labour cost) is 22c/l and the milk price is 30.5c/l. With these set in stone effectively each cow within the herd can be benchmarked on profit figures. So what will separate the cows on profit? Low fat and protein percentage and calving date will be the big factors.

Rosarii said: “Actual milk yield will of course separate cows within a herd, but for those farmers who have been recording for a while it’s milk solids and fertility (calving date) that will be the big drivers.”

The idea behind separating the cows on profit and cell count is to make the job of interpreting the results easier. It means farmers will only need to focus on the cows that fall into the red (low performers) and the orange (average performers) and be able to take clear action on the results in a more organised fashion.

The idea behind segregating the cows into four groups on somatic cell count is similar. The herd is broken up into persistently infected (two tests over 200,000 cells), recently infected (current test over 200,000), recently cured and healthy cows (consistently less than 200,000).

Pat Murphy, general manager, Kerry Agribusiness, said: “Milk recording is one of the most powerful performance monitoring tools available to dairy farmers and is absolutely essential to inform on-farm decision-making and the long-term sustainability of our milk suppliers.”

Munster AI boss Kevin Coffey said: “We are delighted to get these new reports simplified so farmers can focus on taking the necessary action.”

The new reports will only be available for spring-calving herds for the moment as work is ongoing on creating a similar report for autumn-calving herds.

I asked Thomas if he would ever consider dropping out of milk recording. He was quick to respond: “No, for me it’s essential. I get the reports online and I find the information vital to manage milk quality. I’ll soon be getting to the stage where I’ll have enough numbers and I want to ensure that I’m not carrying any passengers.”

Thomas’s herd is recorded four times a year using a DIY recording and the cost is just over €9/cow.

When we called this week, the Laffan herd was averaging 27 litres produced at 3.36% protein and 3.96% fat (2.0kg MS) on 4kg of meal and grazed grass. On Tuesday of this week, more than 30 of the 96 milking cows had been served.