Greenfield Farm: all systems go for now

A 12.5t load of nuts was blown into the meal bin on Friday (26 April). It’s GAIN Prime at €305/t retail. The farm is using over 1t/day to milking cows at 3kg/cow daily.

Almost 18t of Super net (27% N) plus 3.7% sulphur (S) bulk at €285/t was spread. Some high potassium (K) product 0:0:50 (muriate) bulk was also spread on low-potash paddocks for silage, etc, at €380/t.

So while all that was coming in, there is also a lot leaving and growing on the farm. There has been a milk collection every day for the last seven days.

Bulk tank washing

For some farms, this frequency of collection can cause problems in order to get a suitable chance to wash the bulk tank properly. Caution is needed and a plan for washing needs to be cleared with the lorry driver, etc.

In the last week, milk was collected every night between 2am and 4am.

Growth rate was recorded at 56kg per day (Tuesday 23 April). It’s fair to say it’s slightly lower than what might have been expected, but weekly growth figures can vary depending on what paddocks you take in or out, etc.

Stocking

Stocking rate is still set high at 4.8 cows/ha and still paddocks are hitting for 1,600kg as a pre-grazing yield.

Farm cover dropped from 861kg to 814kg (169kg/LU) in the week. This is on target for this main growing season target. Some farms will drop cover to 140 or 150kg/LU. However, this leaves little in reserve if you get caught with a slow, cold week in terms of growth rate.

The cows are still yielding up around 2.1kg of milk solids per day, with the last quality results (25 April) showing 4.15% fat, 3.69% protein and 4.89% lactose with SCC 146,000 cells/ml, and TBC 12.

Protein percentage went as high as 3.78% on the 24 April. On the same collection, the fat percentage dropped to 3.76% - so it was almost 1:1 protein-to-butterfat percentage.

The March milk cheque landed into the bank account. Looking at the first page of the statement, the net milk value after levies was €62,147 for 14,832kg of milk solids. That works out at €4.19/kg MS (37.3c/l in old money).

When you take off the VAT (5.4%) it’s €58,960 for 14,832kg or a price €3.97 ex-VAT per kilo of milk solids.

Schemes

About 50% of the milk cheque is from the Glanbia base price with the rest from fixed milk price schemes. The schemes are better than the base price and overall are adding a small touch (0.3c/l) to the farm's milk price.

It’s the high milk solids that are really adding to the bottom line as they are adding almost 7c/l to the base price. The statement shows the March fat percent for the farm was 5.08% (Glanbia average 4.24%) and the protein was 3.55% (Glanbia average 3.37%).

The dry weather really helped make it easier identifying cows in heat and the sexed trial inseminations have all been completed during the week similar to the other commercial farms taking part in the trial.

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