Not many family farms living in rural Ireland are already owning their third electric car, but, this is exactly the case for the Egan family living at Abbeydorney in north Kerry.

If you asked me before I arrived on the farm I’d probably have said there was a better chance of someone having a greyhound that won the Derby than a farm family on their third electric car. In essence the electric car story signals how this business operates.

They are not afraid to innovate, they measure progress and manage accordingly and if investment means it’s better for the environment and better for the business then they have no bother giving it a go.

Frank, Mary and Eoin Egan started farming in partnership almost seven years ago in 2015. The next phase of this is the full transfer of farm ownership to Eoin and as Frank said maybe some day Eoin’s son or daughter will be farming at Abbeydorney.

Frank said the Egan philosophy was never to milk large numbers of cows, but the business has grown as opportunities have arrived in terms of getting more land. In 2021, 107 cows were milked and that has lifted to 112 cows in 2022. Over 680,000l (52,400 kg MS) were delivered in 2021, mainly from grazed grass, and just over 700kg of meal fed per cow.

A bit like the electric car story, the focus for the last number of years has been on upgrading knowledge on ways to reduce chemical nitrogen usage, getting more from the herd without increasing volume too much and managing the land bank to grow more feed.

Calving starts the end of January and finishes the end of April. Herd EBI is €164 with 50-50 dairy beef sires used and a replacement rate of about 20%.

It’s not all about work on this farm, with all members heavily involved in the local GAA club. Eoin is still playing hurling with the Abbeydorney senior team which means he needs to be training and playing matches alongside running the farm. This puts a certain discipline on the business to keep the work streamlined and manageable.

When we talk about generational farming it is often a misnomer that the farmer gets handed everything and all he or she has to do is turn up and milk the cows and collect the milk cheque. If only it was so simple.

Development journey

This farm and the development journey this Kerry farm has been on typifies what has happened on most Irish dairy farms. In the 1980s a cubicle shed and silage slab was built to take the drudgery out of ring feeders and scraping open yards around ring feeders. A new parlour came shortly after in 1990 once the business was up and going.

This led to a slatted shed going up in 1994 to contain all nutrients up to the required standard and this was further reinforced with the installation of a slurry tower in 2008. Extra cubicles were installed in 2013 and then the parlour after 25 years needed to be upgraded in 2014.

When the quota brakes came off and the herd could grow it prompted further parlour work in 2019 and extra cubicles and an extension to the slurry tower.

New shed

In 2020, a new slatted shed and cubicles were built, and in 2021 an extension to the 1994 slatted shed was completed.

So this summarises the investment in buildings alone to manage nutrients, manage herd health and make the farm a nice place to work.

This is before all the investment in machinery, stock, land drainage and reseeding etc.