The theme of this years’ conference was ‘Seizing opportunities for a better future’. The conference heard from the winners of the Grassland Farmer of the Year competition about how they grow high tonnages of grass per hectare. The main outcome from the judge’s report on the competition was that soils, even on finalist’s farms was 51% deficient for lime, 41% deficient for phosphorus and 56% deficient for potassium.

Asked how come these farms are still growing a lot of grass even though around 50% of their farms are below target soil fertility, the judges said that the farmers are compensating to improve soil fertility by spreading more high compound fertilisers. In effect, this is improving grass growth, by building up soil reserves. It was also noted that the last few years have been good grass growing years and the effect of poor soil fertility will really only become evident when grass is under pressure.

The nine dairy finalists in the competition grew an average of 15.5t/ha of grass in 2016. The overall winner, Eddie O’Donnell, will grow 18.4t/ha this year.Farmer Focus

Dairy farmer Phil Purcell from Kilmanagh, Co Kilkenny spoke at the Kilkenny conference about how he manages the spring workload. He is milking 200 Holstein Friesian cows on a 62ha milking block. Phil has one full-time employee – Conor, a professional diploma in dairy farm management student.

Conor is Phil’s fourth student from the course. The students start in September and stay on the farm for 12 months, taking three days off per month for course days at Moorepark. The Purcell herd is stocked at around 3 cows/ha and they produced 428kg of milk solids per cow from 700kg of meal fed.

Herd fertility is good so next February Phil and Conor will calve down 170 cows, but he said that this will put extra pressure on labour.

He says he tackles the spring workload in three ways; firstly, by having clearly defined roles so everyone working on the farm knows what they should be doing so all the jobs are done. Secondly, he manages animals to reduce labour and finally he has invested in facilities to reduce the workload.

On the subject of roles, he likes to do the morning milking himself in the 24-unit parlour, with Conor doing the evening milking. Phil does most of the calving and early-stage calf feeding and calf rearing. Conor feeds the cows and is responsible for grassland management and allocating grass to the herd. This year, Phil got a representative from Kilkenny Mart to collect the bull calves every Tuesday for sale in the mart which he said freed up a huge amount of time.

When it comes to managing animals, Phil turns out the maiden heifers to grass in an outfarm in mid-February. He says this dramatically reduces the workload as there are less animals to be fed in the yard. Cows are body condition scored and vaccinated in the autumn to reduce workload and risk of disease in spring. Cows are grouped according to calving date and BCS and are fed accordingly.

In the spring, freshly calved or sick cows being withheld from the bulk tank are marked with a red band and are milked in a separate mob. This year, Phil plans to feed the dry cows later in the evening so as to encourage them to calve during the day.

On facilities, he says there is nothing special about the facilities on the farm but he does have a 24-unit milking parlour with automatic cluster removers, an automatic drafting gate and a backing gate – none of which he would do without.

He has a mobile calf feeder and he turns out batches of heifer calves to a sheltered paddock for once-a-day feeding from mid-March depending on the weather.

“Every student that has come on to the farm credits the mobile calf feeder as having a massive impact on reducing the workload. Getting calves out of the sheds and into bigger batches saves a massive amount of time,” Phil said.

“You have to keep the system simple, look after the people working on the farm, look after animals, invest in labour-saving facilities and most importantly look after yourself and your family,” Phil said.

On the subject of labour, he was asked from the floor about how he manages people. Phil said that he has had three students before Conor and has never had issues with any of them as he ensures that they’re paid correctly, are given separate accommodation near the farm and have adequate time off, including every second weekend off.

“It’ll be quiet over Christmas and like all young lads, Conor will want to enjoy himself. During the quiet period he can have all the time off he wants to let his hair down. We’ll dry off the herd in early December and do the minimum around the Christmas and New Year before things start up again,” Phil said.

Research news

Lime

David Wall and Ger Courtney spoke about the benefits of lime application. They said that there is a 6:1 return on lime. That is, for every €100 spent on lime, the return in extra grass growth will be €600. This is before the potential to reduce chemical fertiliser, because of its improved effectiveness, is factored in.

Iodine

Stephen Butler spoke about the impact of high iodine levels in milk. He said that excess iodine in infant powder causes health problems for babies. Too much iodine was being used in compound feed rations causing toxicity for both cows and babies. He said that iodine recommendations have changed and rates of iodine in milk have since dropped but farmers who supplement iodine need to be careful to avoid supplementing with too much.

Next generation

Morgan O’Sullivan highlighted the key lessons from the Next Generation Herd study at Moorepark on high EBI cows. He said that the high EBI cows delivered an extra €613/ha net profit per year compared to the national average EBI herd.

ICBF

Kevin Downing said farmers should expect to see the average EBI of bulls in the active bull list increase by about €30/head in the January evaluation as changes to the milk value (increase in value of fat) and the introduction of the test day model take shape. A new sire advice programme is being launched in the next few months. Andrew Cromie said the minimum team of AI bulls is now seven for herds of 100 cows or less. This figure increases up to 14 bulls for herds up to 375 cows. This is to improve reliability of the pack. He said the even use of bulls across a herd is as important as the number of bulls used.