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Claire Beckett farms in partnership with her parents John and Karen outside the village of Donaghcloney, Co Armagh.
The 86ha (215ac) land base supports a herd of 150 high-performing Holstein-Friesian cows. With the exception of 25ac reserved for wholecrop wheat, land is laid out in grass swards.
In addition to her farming duties, Claire also works as a ruminant nutritionist for Trouw Nutrition with a client base north and south of the Irish border.
To say the herd is well managed is an understatement. The working relationship between Claire and her father, John is extremely effective and delivering results across all aspects of herd management.
Although the herd is managed as a high-input, high-output setup, grazed grass and forage in general play a key role in milk production.
The grazing setup and sward quality is top class, with John and Claire recently winning the title of Ulster Grassland Farmer of the year.
Herd details
The 150-cow herd is predominantly autumn-calving, with 75% of animals calved down from September to November. The remainder of the herd finishes calving by April.
Fertility is excellent, with the herd’s calving interval at 373 days and cows averaging 4.2 lactations on farm.
Replacement rate is 24%, with sexed semen used on heifers and a selection of top-performing cows. The remainder of the herd are crossed to Angus or Blue sires via AI.
Average yields are 10,453 litres for a 305-day lactation from 3.3t of concentrate, giving 3,000l of milk produced from forage.
Milk quality has a rolling butterfat at 4.24% and 3.32% protein (814kg of milk solids) for the 12-month period ending in January.
Cell counts averaged 112 SCC and 13 Bactoscan, with all milk produced sold to Dale Farm.
Drying off
Cows start drying off in July. Five years ago, the herd was moved towards selective dry cow therapy as a replacement for the blanket use of antibiotic tubes.
For the first month of the dry period, cows get access to rough grazing, then are housed for targeted feeding in the month prior to calving.
Once housed, cows are fed low-potash silage, straw, wholecrop wheat, 3kg of a bespoke pre-calver blend and anionic salts.
Analytics
During this time, Claire puts her skills and knowledge from her nutrition background to good use on transition cows.
Every week, she tests the urine from approximately 20% of the dry cows for pH levels. The purpose of this is measuring the dietary cation-anion balance (DCAB) in the dry cow diet.
When cows coming close to calving (final 30 days) are fed a negative DCAB diet, this stimulates calcium mobilisation.
The net outcome is that the incidence of clinical and sub-clinical milk fever is greatly reduced in early lactation.
Ideally, Claire is looking for close-up cows with urine around pH 6 to 7. If pH is outside this range, she tweaks the level of anionic salts in the diet to get the right balance.
This practice has been in place for several years and has been highly successful at preventing clinical and subclinical milk fever in the herd.
Cows in milk
Given the block autumn-calving profile of the herd, cows are managed in two groups, with high- and low-yielding animals.
Once cows calve, they move to the high-yielding group. Cows are offered first- and third-cut silage, wholecrop wheat and 11kg concentrate. Feed rate is set at maintenance plus 34.5l.
The low group are fed first and fourth-cut silage, wholecrop wheat and 6kg of ration set to maintenance plus 23.5l.
Cows are topped up in the parlour with a 16.5% protein nut at a rate of 0.45kg per litre up to a maximum of 7kg of concentrate through a feed to yield system.
Grazing
Grazing starts in late March with low-yielding cows turned out for two to three hours at first and built up gradually to full-time grazing over three weeks.
The grazing platform is flexible in size, starting around 25 acres in spring and growing to 65 acres as more cows graze in summer.
Grazing cows are managed as two groups. Cows yielding below 36l and PD+ graze day and night. Cows yielding 38l to 44l and PD+ join this group to graze by day, but are housed at night.
An auto-drafting gate makes it easy to separate the cows that stay in after the evening milking and which animals go back to grass. Cows over 45l remain housed full-time.
Silage is made on a four-cut system every five weeks from the first week of May, with 120ac harvested in first cut, followed by 100ac, 80ac and 60ac for each successive cut.
Breeding
All cows are scanned at 21 days post-calving to check for cycling activity and issues such as endometritis or ovarian cysts.
Breeding starts on 1 December, with all animals served to AI and inseminations carried out by Claire’s mother Karen.
Most cows will cycle naturally, with heats picked up by heat time collars. If cows are not cycling naturally, they are placed on a synchronisation programme using CIDRs.
Maiden heifers are also inseminated following a breeding programme. The majority of animals will hold on first and second service. A third service is rarely needed.
Herd health
The herd has a high health status, with cows vaccinated against BVD, Lepto, IBR and Salmonella. Cows are tested for Johnes twice annually. Routine hoof trimming is carried out at drying-off and again around 100 days in milk. Cows are also footbathed three to four times per week as a prevention against digital dermatitis.
Future plans
Both John and Claire are happy with the herd staying at 150 cows and the current yields. Future plans will centre on improving milk solids, increasing cow longevity, making further gains in herd fertility and getting more from forage.
Any capital investment would include a new dry cow house, followed by a new calf-rearing shed to ease the labour requirements.
However, with heifer calves weighing over 100kg at nine weeks old, the current setup is not impeding calf performance.
Like other aspects of herd performance, it reflects the high level of attention to detail and stock husbandry in place.
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