I manage: “A 200-cow dairy farm on a mix of owned and rented land. There’s about 240ac there in total. It’s me and another girl, Lauren, who is assistant farm manager, working on the farm.”

Cows: ”The cows are crossbreds and are averaging around 1.95kg milk solids per cow per day at the moment. Last year we did 516kg milk solids per cow per year with 900kg of meal. At the moment they’re getting a 14% dairy nut.”

Breeding: “We used an awful lot of sexed semen this year and synchronised all the heifers and so far so good. Over 50% of the herd got sexed semen in the first serve. We recently moved to a 10-week breeding system where we AI for six/seven weeks and then we leave in the bull for the last four weeks. We have two Hereford bulls and a Friesian bull. I find the breeding collars a brilliant tool. Last year we had a 5% empty rate and 88% calved down in six weeks.”

Grass:”Growth is after slowing up a little bit, hopefully we’ll get a good bit of rain to drive it on. We didn’t reseed any ground this year given the cost of fertiliser but one thing we won’t hold back on is lime.”

Fertiliser: “We went out with 24-2.5-10 on grazing ground, at just under a bag to the acre. All the first cut silage ground got cut sward at a little under two bags to the acre. I put out 2,000 gallons of slurry on the silage ground as well.”

Silage:”We make three cuts of silage, two for the pit and the third cut is usually bales of haylage which we feed to dry cows.”

Greenhill Fruit Farm: “Eamonn Crean, the man who owns the farm, also runs a strawberry farm next to the dairy enterprise, they sell strawberries all over the southeast.”

Quotable quote: “A winner is a dreamer that never gives up.”