The May milk cheque at just shy of €60,000 landed this week. While not as significant as the May milk cheque in 2017, which was €82,000, it is nevertheless very welcome.

Why is the milk cheque down over 25% for the month? One of the key drivers, volume, is down 48,000 litres or over 25% on 2017 volumes for the month. This is the continuing knock-on from Spring 2018.

The second big difference is the milk price – this month last year, the manufacturing price was 36c/l compared to 33c/l this year.

There was another issue on the farm of milk supplied that had an elevated somatic cell count (SCC) that cost the farm a penalty of €1,700 (as discussed last week). These three issues are the big reasons why the cheque that just landed is significantly different to last year.

Challenges

To a large extent, these issues highlight the variability in farming as a business and the significant challenges, not alone outside the farm gate, but inside the farm gate, and the technical issues that can have big impacts on output.

Grass growth rates have dropped off completely with little or no rain. Round bale silage (4 to 5kg) and meal (4kg) are in as part of the diet. The cows eat silage after morning milking and come in for meal before evening milking.

It is so important to keep drinking water into milking cows during hot weather. We have recorded cows drinking upwards of 80 to 90l per head per day so its at times like this that a well-constructed water network pays dividends.

The last milk test shows a result of about 19kg per cow at 3.88% protein and 4.30% fat (1.56kg MS/cow) at 226,000 cell count and 4.76% lactose.

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