Watch: challenges and opportunities in dairy conversion

A centrally located farmyard in a 100ac block of land made converting from suckler beef and sheep to dairy farming slightly more straight forward for Limavady farmer John Oliver.

However, managing the new 90-cow dairy herd is not without challenges. The grazing platform is situated on severely disadvantaged area (SDA) land running from 300ft to 600ft above sea level, and the northwest is a high rainfall area.

Improving grazing infrastructure, reducing feed costs and developing genetics to suit the system is now the main focus for John as he nears the end of his second year in dairying.

The farm originally had 60 suckler cows and 400 breeding ewes. John was working at home with his father John Snr and was also doing some casual work relief milking before he made the decision to convert to dairy in November 2014.

John said that he switched to dairying to improve farm profitability without the need to rent or buy more land to expand the existing farm enterprises. He plans to pay back the costs of conversion within seven years and says that developing a high-fertility, high-health status herd over the next 10 to 12 years is a good investment for the business.

“We were able to sell the suckler cows and ewes for good prices which covered the costs of buying in the dairy cows. Milk was less than 20p/l at the time so £1,000 to £1,200 bought the dearest of them,” John said.

Dairy herd

There is a range of genetics in the herd from pure Holstein to British Friesian, with a few Ayrshire and Shorthorn cows also bought in. Cows were acquired in private deals from a range of sources, were all springing, and due to calve down in autumn 2015.

“Most of what we bought-in were springing heifers and around 25% were second calvers or older. If I was doing it again I would start with all heifers to reduce replacement costs in the first year or two,” John said.

This year, 70% will calve in six weeks from mid-September with the remaining 30% calving down in the following six weeks. The overall calving index stands at 369 days. The average yield this year is set to be 7,000 litres from two tonnes of concentrates.

John uses artificial insemination (AI) with high economic breeding index (EBI) bulls selected primarily for fertility, milk solids and feet and legs. Two British Friesian sweeper bulls are then used after AI.

“I am not chasing high yields. Healthy, fertile cows that get back in-calf and stay correct on their feet pay bills, that’s what I’m after,” he said.

At breeding time, tail paint and stickers have been used as heat detection aids and half the herd was synchronised and fixed-time artificially inseminated last year to tighten the calving spread. Pedometers are to be used this year, for the first time, to help with heat detection.

“At the start, I just wanted to get milking and wasn’t too worried about what calving pattern the herd would have. But now I want to stay with block calving and tighten it more so that we are focusing on one thing for a certain time of the year and doing it as best we can,” John said.

All cows are fed to yield through in-parlour feeders and six out-of-parlour feeders in the cubicle sheds. During the winter, silage is fed in block grabs. There is no diet feeder on the farm.

Buildings

With the dairy cow purchases covered by suckler and sheep sales, the main cost of the dairy conversion for John was renovating and extending existing houses and building a milking parlour.

The parlour is a 10-unit swing over with room for four additional units to be added on in the future. It has a manual ID system for feed allocation and yield records.

“The payback on the sheds and parlour is seven years, although if we went with a more basic parlour, this could have been brought back to closer to five years,” John said.

Cows are run as one group but are housed in two cubicle sheds in winter with the parlour located directly between the two houses.

The largest house holds 50 cows and was originally a cubicle house and creep area for suckler cows and calves with a self-feed silage pit. New cubicles were put in and a covered silo had a barrier installed to convert it to a feeding passage.

The second house holds 40 cows and was converted from slated pens for sucklers. The roof of the house was extended on one side and an additional tank was added to increase storage and to allow a second row of cubicles to be installed.

The parlour itself is positioned between the two houses and was originally a solid floor house that was used for housing sheep. The floor of the pit is at the level of the original house, so the sides of the pit were filled up, the roof of the house was raised and re-roofed with insulated tin, and a tank was built below the collecting pen.

There are plans to develop grazing infrastructure this summer by constructing new laneways and subdividing some larger fields into paddocks.

The farm has loamy soils but these can be shallow in places and grazing can be challenging in times of high rainfall. Recent wet weather has made grazing difficult for John and cows have been on-off grazing for the past two weeks.

A significant part of the problem is not wet ground in the paddocks, but the condition of laneways and around the entrance to paddocks. A temporary laneway made from bark chippings worked well initially but has recently deteriorated and become muddy.

The plan is to put in 400m of laneways to improve access to the grazing platform. John will probably use hardcore and quarry dust for the new laneways.

He also wants to subdivide some larger fields into paddocks to make grazing management easier. At present, cows are being strip-grazed on 12 hour breaks across some fields, the largest of which are up to 10 acres in size.

Most silage is cut from rented ground and there are still 180 Blackface ewes that graze owned mountain ground. The ewes are put on the grazing platform for a period during the winter. However, John plans to take the sheep off earlier this year in early January as overgrazing has delayed turnout and first cut in previous years.

The other element of reducing feed costs for John is to make better quality silage. “We had poorer quality silage than we would have wanted this past two years. We had a good first cut this season and the focus is to make better silage to keep pulling concentrate levels and feed costs down. That’s where we can improve the most,” John said.