Newcastle in north Kildare was one of the worst affected parts of the country during and after the snow storm, with the UCD Lyons Estate farm completely shut from the outside for four days. Things were kept running by the farm staff though, who slept on-site to keep everything operational.

The cold spring has had a massive impact on grass growth so Bridget Lynch, who looks after grassland management, is rationing out what grass is available until the planned start of the second round on 9 April.

“We won’t let average farm cover drop below 550kg/ha," Bridget said at the ASA walk held on the farm on Wednesday.

"At the moment it’s at 772kg but if grass doesn’t grow and if we keep the feed budget as is we’ll be out of grass in 7.5 days’ time. If it grows 10kg/day we’ll have enough grass for 12 days ahead and if it grows 15kg/day we’ll have 15 days grass ahead.”

Because of the weather disruption, cows were kept inside on silage and meal for longer than planned, so milk production is back on previous years. The cows are currently milking 26.7kg/day at 4.71% fat and 3.29% protein, or 2.13kg of milk solids per cow.

There is 32% of the farm grazed and cows were fully housed for 13 days and at grass for 17 days so far this year.

Calving

Fifty-three cows out of 60 in the demonstration herd have calved . The cows are getting allocated 12kg of grass dry matter and 8kg of meal, along with 2kg of grass silage. The EBI of the cows is €161 – one of the highest EBI scores in the country.

Diet and performance

Finbarr Mulligan, who is responsible for formulating the diet and looking after cow health and welfare said he is disappointed with the current performance especially as the cows were on excellent quality 81% DMD silage when fully housed.

On the positive side, cow body condition score is excellent, with the average BCS at 2.84 for the milkers. Around 20% of the milkers are considered to be in low BCS.

Last year, 13 cows were put on once a day milking during the breeding season to improve BCS, but Finbarr doesn’t think it will be necessary to do so this year.

The feed budget at Lyons is fixed, with around 1.5t of meal being fed per year. Most of this is front-loaded in the spring, to reduce the period of negative energy balance and to drive up milk yield. The target is to produce 630kg of milk solids per cow.

Cows start off on 8kg of meal but this gradually reduces to 3kg/day before drying off. One of the big challenges on the farm has been during the first round of grazing, when post-grazing grass heights were higher than desired because a lot of supplement being fed.

However, the post grazing heights being recorded this year are much improved, with an average grass utilisation rate of 83%, according to Bridget.

Last year, the herd produced 595kg of milk solids per cow and grew an average of 14t of grass per hectare. Just 54% of the herd were in-calf after six weeks of breeding and overall empty rate after 13 weeks of breeding was 15%.

Fertility

To make up for the poor fertility, extra heifers were introduced this year, bringing the replacement rate to 30%.

“Fertility is a big challenge for us. We have mineral analysis done on the cows and there are no deficiencies. The question is do we have the right type of cow for the high output system with good fertility?” Finbarr wonders.

In terms of profitability, Karina Pierce presented preliminary Profit Monitor data which shows that the farm made a net margin of 16.57c/l in 2017 from a gross output of 38.25c/l, variable costs of 13.96c/l and fixed costs of 7.73c/l.

Karina said that fixed costs are assumed and not actual as they cannot get accurate fixed costs for the demonstration herd as they are part of a larger farm. The fixed costs used are based on the fixed costs of the top 25% of profit monitor results for winter milk herds. Within fixed costs, labour is coming in at just 1c/l, so in reality the fixed costs should be significantly higher.

Either way, the farm had a good year financially in 2017 comparable with other low input farms.

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