I farm:”In partnership with my father Robert. He works full-time off-farm and we’re farming 140ac in total; 90ac of that is grass and 50ac is rough grazing. We’re new entrants into dairying since November 2023. We used to have suckler cows and sheep, but we gradually cut back numbers to get into dairying.”
The land:”Is heavy up here so we knew we needed a cow that would respond well to feeding. A grass-based cow just isn’t going to work, as we need to feed strong even in the best of years. We get a lot of rain in the shoulders of the year and our grass only starts to grow when the place dries up.”
Numbers: “We’re currently milking 47 pedigree Holstein Friesians and aim to calve down around 70 next year. Once we hit those numbers we’ll be happy. All our heifers were handpicked from different farms from here to Cork.”
Calving:”We start calving in mid-October here and 60% will be calved before the new year. Spring calving doesn’t really suit our land. We actually have a bit of an unplanned break at the minute, with nothing due to calve for another 10 days.”
Production: “The first year we did 550kg of milk solids, last year we did 675kg and they should do 750kg this year, as more cows mature. They’re currently averaging 36l, 4.58% fat and 3.75% protein.”
Feed: “We’re feeding around three tonne of meal a year. Although, once we get into a more mature herd this year it’ll make a lot more financial sense. As those cows mature they’ll eat a lot more forage. ”
Breeding: “It started this week and we’ll be breeding for a good while. I prefer to give them all a good chance to go in calf. We use all Holstein Friesian female sexed semen and everything else gets beef. We have two Angus stock bulls and use Belgian Blue straws too. It would only be the highest yielding cows that get sexed semen and the bottom third all get beef. All replacements are born before 1 January.”
Conversion:”We converted to dairy because we felt we weren’t getting paid for the amount of work going in. We’re actually doing less work now.”
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