Feeding and milking — the Harpur way

Bessbrook is near Newry, Co Down, about 70 miles north of Dublin and 50 miles south of Belfast. In total, the Harpurs farm 220ha (545 acres) of which 178ha (80%) is in grassland. The rest of the land is used to grow feed for the winter diet — a mix of winter barley, spring wheat for wholecrop and cereal undersown with grass.

The Harpurs are milking 380 cows, three times a day, 365 days a year and the cows are indoors all year round. Each year, 120 replacements are also reared on the farm. In 2012, the Harpurs constructed a nine-bay shed, which has cubicles for 240 heifers at different growth stages, a covered feeding area and a covered handling area.

The farm is 500 feet above sea level and soil type is mainly loamy in texture with much rolling countryside recording about 43 inches (1,100mm) of rain per year. Brothers David and Robert farm with their father, Roy, along with one full-time labour unit and two night milkers that come to the farm just for the third milking (two hours) every night.

The focus of the walk was to review how the Harpurs manage to include high quality fresh grass by cutting and bringing fresh grass indoors every day. The 380-strong milking herd are housed in two groups — one group is called the ‘highs’ and they are cows that are less than 150 days in milk, while the ‘stales’ group, those cows mostly calved over 150 days are in another shed. In between both sheds is a state-of-the-art 34-unit herringbone milking parlour that runs for two and half hours morning and evening and, again, for two hours at night.

All cows are bred to dairy AI but as David remarked: ‘‘We should be getting to a position where we can sell surplus replacements but our fertility let us down last year. We think we have it back on track now.’’ Cows are fitted with ‘HeatTime’ heat detectors and are served at least four or five times with dairy AI and, if still not in calf, they are served by a clean-up stock bull.

The zero grazing option

During the grass growing season, about five acres of grass is cut every day for the entire milking herd. Cutting started this year at the beginning of April. The plan is to mow the paddocks every four weeks. In between cuts, the grass gets 2,000 gallons of slurry per acre and one and half bags of CAN/acre (over 40 units of bagged nitrogen per acre every four weeks).

Grass is cut on owned and leased land and travels into the farm from fields that are two, three, five and seven miles from the home farm. They have leased land 18 miles away but this is harvested for silage.

The key to the Harpur cut and carry system is the Ed Swally designed trailer imported from Cheshire and modified by the Harpurs. The Harpurs have a mower that is left in the field and, each time, they pull the trailer in beside the mower and cut up to seven tonnes of grass dry matter (35 tonnes fresh) to fill up the trailer.

How long the zero grazing takes depends on the yield of grass and distance to the shed. The plan is to cut grass yielding closer to 3,000kg DM per hectare. The paddock cut last week was reseeded six years ago and had received two and quarter bags of CAN per acre and 2,000 gallons of slurry in February.

The different groups

The herd is split in two all year round and feeding is managed as two separate groups. The ‘highs’ group of cows last week were getting 10kg of blend from the feeding wagon, 28kg of grass silage and 30kg of fresh grass and a top-up of meal in the parlour, which was averaging 3.0kg per cow for the whole group, but ranges depending on milk yield. Grass silage is good quality third cut 25% DM, D Value 73, crude protein 15.1 and ME 11.6.

Freshly calved cows are increased from 1.5kg of meal at day of calving to 6.5kg of meal at three weeks post calving. This continues for three more weeks and then feed to yield kicks in (0.45kg of meal per kilo milk over 35 for cows and 32 for heifers). On the day of the walk, this group of cows and heifers were averaging 33 litres and were, on average, 118 days in milk.

The ‘stale’ group are cows that have reached peak milk and are on the downward milk slope. The farm policy is to move cows into this group when they are no longer producing 30 litres and are more than 150 days calved. The forage for this group changes to grass only (no silage or blend) and they are fed to yield in the parlour with cows getting 0.4kg of meal for every litre over 20kg and over 18kg for heifers.

Last week, this group were averaging 17 litres per day, on average 294 days in milk and getting 1.5kg of meal in the parlour.

What I saw and didn’t expect

Serious investment in buildings: In the last five years, the Harpurs have invested over €1m in a new parlour, cow shed, heifer shed and slurry storage.

Huge land base: We tend to think that if a herd is indoors all year round that maybe the farmer hasn’t much land in total or much land around the parlour — not the Harpur farm. In total, the Harpurs are farming around 560 livestock units on 543 acres or 2.6 LU/ha.

No second handling when bring grass in: Most of these machines cutting fresh grass feed out the back door and the grass must be pushed in — not this Ed Swally trailer — but I’m told they are not making this type of machine anymore.

What I saw and expected

Hard work and long hours: Three times a day milking, cutting fresh grass, hauling slurry and bag fertilizer leaves very little room for other jobs.

Need serious attention to detail: Ruthless measurement is crucial in the high input, high output system and the Harpurs look to be doing just that. Some farmers argued to me on the day that the stale group could be out grazing and you could expect the same performance but the Harpurs have chosen a system and are sticking to it.

Opinion

The Harpurs made it clear from the very start that the system they operate is not for everybody. The feed cost of zero grazing grass is between €160 and €180 per tonne of dry matter regardless of what way you twist the figures, with not much difference north or south. You must account for establishment costs, variable costs, machinery running, land charge, etc, and the €160 to €180 per tonne is only achieved when you assume a dry matter yield of 10 to 11 tonnes of DM/hectare which is a decent average figure. This is comparable with the cost of grass silage.

Some farmers love machinery and prefer to be working machinery than moving a strip wire and while that’s a choice farmers can make — what they decide must be economically sustainable for their business. Compared with alternatives, zero grazing means that you have a lot more daily machinery work to fit in beside your milking business.

The Harpurs look to have a good mix of skillsets within their family to operate such a business. The spike in the price of conacre/rented land has reduced the competitiveness of this system (north and south) compared with purchased concentrates. On the day, the farm was very well presented and the hosts did their utmost to show other farmers how they operate.

It would have been nice to have a little more discussion or explanation on comparable costs and benefits of the zero grazing option as an alternative for large-scale, confined herds and the overall farm profitability from confinement systems.

In summary, the Harpurs seem very good operators and good managers will succeed no matter what milk production system they run. Personally, I don’t think the all year indoors, three times a day milking with zero grazed grass is sustainable long term for an industry if you can let cows do the walking and harvesting as they are bred to do. Be businesslike and realistic when making strategic investment decisions and hopefully recent weather patterns happen once every 50 years.