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A massive crowd of almost 700 packed into the Charleville Park Hotel in Cork on Wednesday for the annual Irish Grassland Association dairy conference.
The first speaker up was Welsh farmer Rhys James, who 480 cows on a highly-stocked milking platform near Pembrokeshire.
Rhys normally feeds 1.3t of meal per cow, but the drought in 2018 forced made him feed 1.6t/cow. The farm is highly stocked at 4.4 cows/ha, but the overall stocking rate is 2.8 cows/ha.
Output was 2,090kgMS/ha in 2018 across the milking platform hectares or 1,267kgMS/ha across all hectares.
The farm made a net profit in 2017 of £2,013/ha before rent, depreciation, finance, tax and drawings.
Growing grass
Denis O’Donovan from Rosscarbery in Cork was speaking at the same session. Alongside his wife Collette and son Eoghan, he milks 150 cows, with a stocking rate of 3.4 cows/ha.
Denis discussed his system of growing as much grass as possible (16.25t/ha on platform) and turning that grass into high value milk from high EBI, Jersey crossbred calves.
Denis' key message for the future was for farmers to prepare to plant more trees in the coming year, while also pointing out that the low carbon footprint of Irish milk is something that should be marketed more.
Marginal milk
New Zealand researcher John Roche outlined the latest research on marginal milk. This is the money made from producing milk from feeding more concentrates.
“We have seen from data in Ireland and New Zealand that when more meal is fed overall feed costs increase, even fixed costs like electricity goes up,” Roche said.
"Farmers need to be careful who they are getting nutritional advice from. In the UK and USA, the cost of producing base milk is very high and marginal milk is actually very cheap in comparison. But in Ireland the base cost is very cheap and the marginal cost is very expensive.”
He also reiterated Denis O'Donovan's point that milk produced from higher input systems has a higher carbon footprint than from milk produced primarily from grass.
Winter feeding
In the afternoon, David Fogarty, farm manager at Greenfield farm in Kilkenny outlined his plans for feeding the herd this winter.
With an opening farm cover of 1,100kg/ha, David reckons grass and normal levels of meal should be enough to feed the cows this spring, provided the weather is normal.
He explained that 100 cows are being wintered externally by contract rearers which is helping to relieve the pressure on silage, which is currently being purchased from the northwest of the country.
He said the drought cost the farm €110,000, or €350 per cow, in extra costs. Total grass growth for the year 2018 was 12.1t/ha, down from 15.5t/ha in 2017.
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