My Farming Week: Darren Buttimer, Knockskeagh, Lyre, Clonakilty, Co Cork
Just 5km outside Clonakilty, Darren and Caroline Buttimer are farming with their four kids on 335ac of land, which has been in the Buttimer family since the 1960s.
Darren and Caroline Buttimer, DCB Farm, Knockskeagh, Lyre, Clonakilty, Co Cork, with farm manager Richard Roycroft. \ Donal O' Leary
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I’m farming: “With my wife Caroline, my four kids, Matthew (16), Rachel (15), Leah (13) and Hannah (12) and Richard Roycroft is our farm manager. We’re milking 240 cows on 330ac. My milking platform makes up 185ac and the rest are support blocks where I keep my calves and heifers.”
Spring calving:”We’ll start to calve from 20 January onwards and will have 70% of the herd calved down within six weeks. We generally stay in milk throughout the winter; we’d usually have maybe 20 cows that wouldn’t be in-calf that we’ll milk on until March or April. We’ll milk three rows of cows for Christmas. My attitude is it only takes a half an hour and it keeps that bit of money coming in.”
Breeding:”I start AI on 20 April and do it for six weeks – I’d probably use 50% Friesian and 50% beef. For the first 10 days, I do sexed semen on my high EBI cows and I also do fixed-time AI with CIDRs on 30 heifers. After 1 June, I let the bulls out then. It’s intense enough when you’re tail painting like we are – you’ll only do that for five or six weeks.”
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Derogation:”What happens to the derogation is crucial. We’re in derogation ourselves and if it goes it would create a big problem. It’s the number one worry in west Cork at the moment.”
Award: “We were shocked to win Carbery’s Milk Quality and Sustainability Awards. It was the first time we were ever nominated for anything like that. Carbery’s sustainability payment offers a great incentive to do that bit extra. We milk record five times per year and use nearly all protected urea on the milking platform. We’re doing selective dry cow therapy too.”
Milk price:”We’re anticipating that it will drop 10c/l by Christmas to 35c/l. A month or two ago it was very hard to see this coming – you’re talking about a milk price dropping from close to 50c/l to 35c/l in the space of a short time.”
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Title: My Farming Week: Darren Buttimer, Knockskeagh, Lyre, Clonakilty, Co Cork
Just 5km outside Clonakilty, Darren and Caroline Buttimer are farming with their four kids on 335ac of land, which has been in the Buttimer family since the 1960s.
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I’m farming: “With my wife Caroline, my four kids, Matthew (16), Rachel (15), Leah (13) and Hannah (12) and Richard Roycroft is our farm manager. We’re milking 240 cows on 330ac. My milking platform makes up 185ac and the rest are support blocks where I keep my calves and heifers.”
Spring calving:”We’ll start to calve from 20 January onwards and will have 70% of the herd calved down within six weeks. We generally stay in milk throughout the winter; we’d usually have maybe 20 cows that wouldn’t be in-calf that we’ll milk on until March or April. We’ll milk three rows of cows for Christmas. My attitude is it only takes a half an hour and it keeps that bit of money coming in.”
Breeding:”I start AI on 20 April and do it for six weeks – I’d probably use 50% Friesian and 50% beef. For the first 10 days, I do sexed semen on my high EBI cows and I also do fixed-time AI with CIDRs on 30 heifers. After 1 June, I let the bulls out then. It’s intense enough when you’re tail painting like we are – you’ll only do that for five or six weeks.”
Derogation:”What happens to the derogation is crucial. We’re in derogation ourselves and if it goes it would create a big problem. It’s the number one worry in west Cork at the moment.”
Award: “We were shocked to win Carbery’s Milk Quality and Sustainability Awards. It was the first time we were ever nominated for anything like that. Carbery’s sustainability payment offers a great incentive to do that bit extra. We milk record five times per year and use nearly all protected urea on the milking platform. We’re doing selective dry cow therapy too.”
Milk price:”We’re anticipating that it will drop 10c/l by Christmas to 35c/l. A month or two ago it was very hard to see this coming – you’re talking about a milk price dropping from close to 50c/l to 35c/l in the space of a short time.”
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