Kieran O’Sullivan is milking with his family at Goleen in west Cork right out on the sea, about as far west as you can go. The terrain is difficult and when you scan the landscape you can see productive green fields mixed in with exposed rock and heather.

Kieran inherited the farm from his parents after he completed his agricultural training in Darra Agricultural College in 1983/’84. At the time, it was more a sheep and cattle farm than a dairy farm. However, by converting more land and bringing more rocky land into good grass, cow numbers have increased.

In the last number of years, cows milking have increased from under 100 to 124 cows milking in 2014 and 136 cows milking in 2015. Kieran has a strong type of a British Friesian herd with many of the cows going back to the BlackIsle Glenalbyn sire.

He likes to keep the herd young because there is a lot of walking to do on this farm so he bought in 30 heifers in 2014 and 25 in 2015.

All AI is used starting at the end of April and continuing for five or six weeks. Milk recording is a key tool used to monitor somatic cell count. The O’Sullivans go so far as to create their own homemade chart of cell counts from their milk records so that visually they can build a track record very quickly of problem cows or cows that need to be checked carefully.

When Kieran gets the text back with the top five cows on cell count, he’ll CMT the cow to identify the quarter, decide how bad the infection is and then usually tube that quarter with Tetra Delta or Synulox.

The plant wash routine is perfect on this farm. The plant is rinsed after milking and left rinsing until all the milk is gone from the rinse water and it’s almost running clear.

A hot wash is used every morning and Kieran uses 1.5 litres of Hydrosan liquid detergent in almost 300 litres of hot water. This is rinsed in the plant for 10 minutes and then retained for the next milking. In the morning after milking, this is re-used and then dumped.

The plant is descaled three times a month. Kieran said: “I believe in the regular hot wash to get the fatty deposits away. My motto is if the consumer walks into the parlour they must be happy and all equipment used must look the part. It’s the least we owe our consumers who purchase our product and our processors.”

Farming System

In 2014 Kieran milked 124 cows and in 2015 he is milking 136 cows in spring milk production supplying Drinagh Co-op. In total Kieran is farming 107ha (264ac) and milk delivered in 2014 was 508,153 litres at 3.92% fat and 3.48% protein.

Parlour

18 unit herringbone

SCC Results

Average 71,000 for 2014

TBC Results

Average 6,000 for 2014

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