We farm: “Over 290 acres in Kilkenny. All in the one block and all owned land, it’s a family-run farm and we are in the process of converting from beef to dairy.”

Partnership: “I [Tom] am in partnership with my parents, James and Chrissie Murphy, since January of this year. There is a possibility of a future partnership being made between my brother Jim and I, if Jim decides to go farming after his food science studies in WIT. If so, we will expand the future dairy herd together. Our father James is the IFA county chair for Kilkenny.”

Family farm: “We have 300 ewes on the farm with a flock of 120 pedigree Charollais included. The remainder are Suffolk Belclare cross ewes. We have a herd of 70 suckler cows, half spring calvers and half autumn calvers. We dedicate roughly 50 acres each year to spring barley. This will reduce gradually in the near future.”

Converting to dairy: “We hope to be milking by 2019 with preparation under way on the farm at the moment. We have built a milking parlour, topless cubicles, roadways, and a lagoon is being constructed at present to make the conversion.”

Future ambitions: “With the grass-based system, we will be demanding good milk solids from our dairy herd. We hope to be milking next year with 80 cows made up of 40 bought in cows and 40 heifers which we are raising on the farm. We’ll get this figure to 120 and then aim to reach 150. We will then re-evaluate how things are going and how we can expand gradually again.”

Weather impact: “We would have a dry farm here in Kilkenny but in all, we aren’t too affected by the drought period so far. We will only really feel the brunt of it come August and September if our natural water supply gets under pressure. We have created 50% of our winter forage so far, we really don’t want to touch that at present.”

Quotable quote: “We’ve always seen ourselves as grass farmers; for us to make as much profit from the crop that we grow, a change in enterprise was needed.”

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Dairy management: dealing with drought