Efficient farming around the environment in Limerick

The National Milk Quality farm walk took place recently at the Macnamara family farm in Gormanstown, Hospital, Co Limerick.

John Macnamara, along with his wife Olivia and his children Caoimhe, Padraic, Ailbhe and Conor, all contribute to the running of their 116ha dairy enterprise.

They hosted a large crowd of politicians and farmers who got an insight into the meticulous detail and efficiency of their farm, but also how they are using common initiatives to maintain the environment around them, while keeping their business profitable.

“If you want a job done, find a busy man to do it and John will certainly do it,” said Kerry Dairy Ireland CEO Pat Murphy.

He has opened his farm to the local school and community to help educate young minds. He is also part of the local Teagasc Bulgaden discussion group, DairyMIS discussion group, Kerry Monitor Farm programme and the Teagasc Clover 150 group.

All this while being involved in the management of the Knockainey and Limerick ladies football team.

These positive attitudes and thorough farm work have culminated in the Macnamara farm winning the top prize in the National Dairy Council and Kerrygold Quality Milk Awards in 2023.

“I took [the trophy] down to the U19 girls training at the local GAA field. We’re going into a county final and I said to the girls that I’d give this trophy back just to win one with them,” John said.

“I didn’t mean that to make any less of the farm, but it shows the amount of time that we put into off-farm activities as well.

“One of the girls said back to me: ‘John, maybe we can win both’.”

Dairy

The herd consists of 220 cows (80, 0-1 years and 50, 1-2 years). The farm labour consists of John, one full-time worker, part-time students and family, and local contractors for machinery usage.

The Macnamaras operate a spring-calving herd, with the breeding season generally lasting for 10 weeks and achieving empty rates of below 10%. The herd is bred to high-EBI bulls, with the herd EBI of €245 being in the top 5% of the country.

In terms of drying off cattle, selective dry cow therapy is used on a proportion of the herd. Ten cows are dried off at a time in the parlour so that the procedure is absolutely correct.

Teat ends are cleaned with cotton wool soaked in methylated spirits.

Responding to an audience question, John said his, at the time, 14-year-old daughter Ailbhe would seal the teats.

“She did the 45 heifers last year. She didn’t do them on her own, there were four of us helping her. We did nine heifers for five evenings.

"The heifers were quiet and the other interesting thing was we didn’t have to train them into the parlour after that. Once they knew it once, they knew it when it came to calving.

“She’s in Junior Cert year this year, so I would hope she would do the same again,” added John, to which a few members of the crowd asked for her services.

Grass and clover

Maximising grass in a cow’s diet has been crucial to the good quality in John’s dairy production.

The farm grew more than 14 tonnes of dry matter/hectare in 2023 with approximately 148kg N/ha spread on the whole farm. Meanwhile, the overall soil fertility is good, with one third of the farm at optimum fertility for lime, phosphorous and potassium.

In the last three years, John has introduced clover to paddocks by over-sowing the plant and applying full reseeds, which he believes has been a major success.

The adequate clover has reduced the amount of fertiliser that needs to be applied from early May to the middle of August.

“The weather was very bad in the back end of last year and it carried on into this spring and it lasted longer than we would’ve liked.

"We were probably well behind targets in a good few areas: kilos of solids, grass grown. I think it picked up after that,” he said speaking about poor grass growth at the start of the year.

“I like the word challenge. I think farmers see them as problems and I don’t blame them, but challenges are something you can overcome.”

Water quality

A major feature of the Macnamara farm is the winding meander of the Morning Star River, which flows from Ballylander right through their milking platform. Since 2006, their catchment area has maintained a consistent ‘good status’ quality.

The critical ways of keeping the water quality high are to cut down the risk of phosphorus, nitrogen, sediment and pesticides running into the streams.

The Macnamaras have taken steps to ensure the water is protected in their platform.

In terms of infrastructure, they have made sure to have adequate slurry storage and soiled water capacity.

They implement a 5m to 10m riparian buffer zone adjacent to the water course, all fencing is 1.5m from banks or water edges, water troughs have been moved to the middle of the fields to cut down on sediment and roadways are sloped away from waters.

John has also planted a portion of native trees and hedges on a small patch of land close to the waterway on some hard-to-reach land.

On the chemical side of things, they focus on a targeted nutrient use and base their slurry and fertiliser on soil indices using the right-rate, right-time, right-place method.

Similar to many other farmers, John champions the use of low emissions slurry spreading, protected urea and planting clover to reduce ammonia emissions and nitrogen loss/use.

He said that most of the environmental work he does is done by many farmers across the country.

“I don’t think we were early or ahead of anyone else [at trying new technology]. I think there’s a lot of farmers putting these practises into place, but we just need to get better at it and we need to do more of it.

“We’ve gone back to planting hedgerows and getting clover into the sward, but none of this is easy. Farmers need the advice; they need the research first of all and clover isn’t cheap either.”

Farm facts