Dan Butler from Clerihan, Co Tipperary has recently made a major investment in his current farmyard, including an upgrade on milking facilities. The herd is 100% autumn-calving and Dan has plans to move to 130 cows next year, steadily moving up from 80 cows over the past few years.

A new parlour was seen as a key investment to facilitate this expansion and make it manageable for a predominantly one-man operation. While in an ideal world going to a greenfield site and designing the perfect yard is what every farmer wants, in many cases the existing yard will have to be modified and upgraded. This can be due to a number of reasons including the layout of the current yard, the major costs involved with a new build and the farming system operated. However, it is important that if you are upgrading your current yard that you do not compromise on cowflow and space. One of the top priorities when carrying out any work on the farmyard is to reduce labour required.

Upgrades

“We had an old 10-unit parlour where each milking could take two and a half hours. The new parlour is 18 units and should take an hour off each milking,” Dan explains. “In total we will hopefully go from four and a half to five hours milking, down to a maximum of three hours a day, which is a massive saving. Where 90 cows used to be nine rows, now it is only five.”

The original shed was extended to incorporate the new parlour, saving substantially on costs.

“We had never really thought about putting the parlour anywhere else, I always wanted to fit it in there so that it was close to the other sheds and we were lucky that the falls in the shed meant that we could,” according to Dan.

Parlour

A high-specification Dairymaster parlour was chosen including automatic cluster removers, milk recording and a cluster flush system. Additionally a feed to yield system has been installed which will work in combination with the individual feeding troughs that are in place.

Not only will the parlour significantly cut down the time that is spent in the pit but the additional investments will also greatly reduce the labour involved around milking.

Cows entering the parlour will now be crossing a completely slatted collecting yard which will reduce the time spent washing down the yard after milking. The tank itself is approximately 17m long and 6m wide, fitted with 20’ 6” slats, it is 2.4m (8ft) deep, giving total capacity of over 210m3, including a freeboard of 300mm, due to the tank being uncovered.

Yard

Once cows exit the parlour they will then walk on slatted slurry channels as they move back towards the shed or out to grass in the spring time. “I was fed up of scraping yards. Having the slurry channels make life much easier as it is predominantly just myself that will be here on the farm day to day,” Dan outlines, “I get in help from Farm Relief Services (FRS) during the busy autumn period and my son James helps out at the weekends also, when he is home from college.”

When the cows exit the parlour they can be guided through a new drafting unit, allowing them to be easily separated for serving when in heat or if they need further attention. They will then move through a new footbath, supplied by Murphy Concrete, as they head back into the shed.

All the while they will be walking on slats. A 4ft-deep precast slurry channel was installed for cows exiting the parlour.

“We went with the precast channels due to the speed. We dried up cows on 10 July with cows calving down again for 1 September so we don’t have much time to get work completed. There is a lot of pressure on farmers to get this kind of work completed quickly during the dry period especially when you are upgrading the current parlour,” Dan explains.

Cost

The total cost of the project came to approximately €183,000 excluding the VAT. Of this, €120,000 was spent on the equipment purchased including the milking machine, in parlour feeding system and the drafting unit.

Of the remaining €63,000, the precast slurry channels and the slats for them came to a cost of €7,491.

The large slatted tank cost approximately €18,500 while the slats for it came to €7,500. “One hidden cost that I wasn’t expecting was the €6,000 for the electrical works,” Dan explains.

The milking equipment has been installed with the help of a TAMS grant that is expected to see Dan gain a grant of 40% of the first €80,000 invested, which would amount to a grant aid of €32,000.

“I went through TAMS for the milking equipment and there have been no problems at all up to this point.

“I haven’t made the payment claim yet but it is relatively straightforward for machines,” according to Dan.

The parlour was supplied and fitted by Coffey Dairy Services while the slats came from Drumderry Precast.

Donal Casey from Clerihan completed the groundworks and the tank while Gerald Mulcahy from New Inn fitted barrier and gates and finished off the project including auxiliary concrete around the yard.