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Travelling to Wexford last Monday was a testing experience – snow on the roads, high winds and election results on the radio. The destination was the Breen farm, near Ferns. I expected to be looking at cows in a shed and discussing when and how Joe would be getting them back out to grass. But rounding the corner before their farm, there was the herd out grazing on the side of a hill.
Joe is milking 220 cows with his father Mick on a 72ha milking block. Joe returned from Saudi Arabia last April, having spent five years working for the Almarai dairy business. Their original plan was to milk 200 cows, but a new lease on a 20ha block next door will allow them to push that to 250 cows next year. An extra 20 heifers were purchased from a farm in Tipperary last month.
Calving is progressing well, with 80 calved so far, which is 36% of the herd. Due date was 7 February for the cows and the end of January for the heifers. Breeding for the heifers started a week earlier than the cows as sexed semen was used. Of the 40 heifers that were served, 20 held to AI and 18 of these had heifer calves. So the conception rate was 50% and the percentage of heifers was 90%, which is about normal. The heifers were served to standing heat for seven days and then synchronised with prostaglandin. The plan is to do the same with the heifers this coming season.
The milking cows have been out grazing day and night since 27 January. They haven’t seen the shed yet. This is remarkable considering the weather last weekend, although Wexford wasn’t as badly hit as other parts.
Johnstown Castle recorded rainfall of 12.4mm on Sunday, while it was three times that in Gurteen, Shannon and Dublin.
“I did the Irish Farmers Journal grass course last year and one thing I learned from it was to have nice covers near the yard for spring. So I have a lot of covers of around 1,000 near the yard with good roadway access and we’re grazing these now,” said Joe.
“It’s not always pretty and we did damage on Sunday night but we’re getting by. I started to back-fence on Monday. We tend not to make cows walk in single file as I think it causes too much damage to that strip, so we just angle the wire back to the gap. Our paddock size is probably a bit small for the summer, but they’re the right size for this time of year which makes a big difference.”
The grazing so far has been top class, with low residuals, little or no damage done and very good regrowths back on the grazed sections. The cows are currently on a diet of 4kg of meal and 8kg of grass, split into two allocations. The average farm cover is 908kg/ha and Joe says the grass budget tells him he’ll have enough grass to get to the start of the second rotation in April, without having to feed silage.
The milking platform is stocked at three cows/ha, but it’s actually higher than that this spring at 3.2 cows/ha as some of the new land is coming out of tillage. The demand in April, with all cows calved and 2kg of meal being fed, will be 44kg/day. His target is to have a farm cover of 500kg/ha to 550kg/ha on the farm on 1 April.
Last year, Joe’s records show that the farm grew 14t/ha, but he reckons he could have underestimated growth slightly. The farm was stocked at 3.2 cows/ha last year and the herd delivered 443kgMS/cow from around 700kg of meal fed per cow.
“The target here is to deliver around 460kgMS/cow to 470kgMS/cow from around 500kg to 600kg of meal with a cow weighing around 500kg to 550kg liveweight. Our first crossbred calves were born in 2011 and at this stage around 75% of the herd is Jersey crossbred,” Joe says.
The freshly calved cows stay in the shed for the first few days after calving and join the main herd when they are out of milk withdrawal.
Calving has been going well so far, with no hard calvings or difficult pulls recorded. There have been a few higher than normal cases of retained cleanings.
So far Joe has counted five cows that have held a cleaning longer than 24 hours. They have all since passed their cleaning but he’s a bit concerned by it, more so its effect on fertility. There have been no cases of milk fever. Cows are getting 75mg/day of magnesium and 10mg/day of minerals through a water dosing system.
Calves
Calves are thriving well. Despite a high proportion of Jersey in the cow herd, the mostly Holstein Friesian calves are good and square with nice colourings. They are housed in a dedicated calf shed built on to the side of the 20-unit milking parlour which was put up in 2017. Cows close to calving are put into a large open straw-bedded shed capable of taking around 30 cows. They are checked last thing before bed at night and then Joe and Mick take turns checking the camera every second night.
If a cow calves, they’ll get up and give it colostrum. Each calf gets 4l in two feeds within the first six hours. After that they are trained to the group teat feeder.
“We used to be giving calves individual feeds for the first few days but we don’t have time for that any more. Once they get their biestings we know that they’re fine and they’ll suck when they’re hungry. They start off getting 4l/day of milk but we build that up to 6l/day after a week or so. Calves are moved to the outfarm and go on once a day feeding from about four weeks of age,” Joe says.
The first of the bull calves will be off to Carnew Mart next week, with 70 or 80 heifer calves reared at home. A handful of Belgian Blue calves will be kept. Fifteen were kept last spring and will be sold in April. The late-calving cows will get vaccinated against rotavirus, while all calves are getting vaccinated against RSV PI3.
Grass
Growth rate over the winter was 3kg/day and the farm has been growing 8kg/day since the first cover was completed on 2 February. One-third of the farm got over 3,000 gallons/acre of watery slurry in January and the rest got 23 units/acre of urea. Joe reckons the land that got the urea is growing better than the fields that got the slurry.
The plan is to spread the farm with one bag/acre of 14:16:0 later this month and then go with 33 units/acre of urea in March to have 70 units/acre out by 1 April. The 14:16:0 will cover the farms phosphorus requirement for the year. The 33% of the farm that Joe has targeted to graze in February will get 3,000 gallons/acre of slurry after grazing. All slurry is spread by a contractor with an umbilical pipe and dribble bar.
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