It has been a hectic few months for us here in east Galway, but that’s to be expected when you undertake a dairy conversion while still wearing the drystock farming colours.

Lambing seems like a distant memory, along with the tough spring.

Our ewes are now shorn and the lambs received their first white oral dose last week, along with a Clik Extra pour-on, boasting an impressive 19 weeks of cover.

Construction has yet to begin on the new 20-unit parlour, so the clock is ticking

This should see the majority of our lambs through to slaughter – we have 1.5 lambs per ewe at foot, which is nothing major to brag about for some, but for an outdoor lambing flock we are satisfied with it!

Reseeded paddocks

We will wean the lambs at the end of June and finish them on the newly reseeded paddocks. We have 30% of what will be our milking platform reseeded so far, with hopes to reseed 70% before the summer is out.

We have gone with an Abergain and Aberchoice grass seed mix, which seems to be the seed of choice for many dairy farmers working with land similar to ours. We had decided not to add clover to the mix in a bid to get weeds under control at an early stage, but we will consider the addition of clover in time.

We are half way through week six of the breeding season with our 103 Jersey-cross heifers. We had 98% submitted inside 21 days and have had 31% repeat so far.

I used two teaser bulls with chin balls to aid heat detection and I would highly recommend it.

We have some young bulls that we will let off with the heifers at the weekend to pick up any that repeat from now on.

New parlour

As it stands, there are 31 heifers to calve in the first week of February and construction has yet to begin on the new 20-unit parlour, so the clock is ticking!

While construction has not begun, it is not by choice. We are waiting on ESB Networks to move some poles that are in the way of the new development - these are the unforeseen delays that appear when you take on any building project.

When planning something like this, I cannot emphasise enough the importance of doing things as early as you can, be it contacting a bank, setting up a partnership, looking for planning permission, drawing up building or roadway plans; it only takes one of the above to go wrong and your time schedule may be put off by a few months. We were 19 weeks waiting for planning approval, which, in turn, delayed our application for the previous round of TAMS.

Our saving grace so far is that we started the process on time, so we are still on course.

While we are waiting for construction on the milking parlour and collecting yard to begin, we don’t get the chance to sit back and enjoy this lovely weather.

We have about half of our winter feed saved so far, with a second cut of silage due in a few weeks. We haven’t had much chance to make surplus bales, as we are highly stocked at the minute.

As we sell some of our beef animals, we will bale paddocks at reasonably light covers to build a reserve of high-quality bales that we can milk off if needs be next spring.

Roadways

Construction of the new cow roadways is also beginning next week. We are leaving this job to the professionals, as we have enough on our plate as it stands. There are 1,500m of cow roads to go in, which is a bit daunting when you look at the financial figures, but it will set us up for life and is a very worthwhile investment. We also require a new water system, as the current one is not sufficient.

On another note, I have also been lucky enough to be asked to join with Aurivo as a new entrant focus farm, which means I will have access to hands-on technical advice on my grassland management and budgeting, breeding decisions and general management of the herd into the future. Every little helps in a new venture like this!