Growth rate has been hovering around the 50kg per day mark for the last while and with demand closer to 30kg per day the farm has continued to build grass cover.

There are super October grazing conditions in Cavan and Monaghan so it means it’s even better in the flat fields of Kilkenny. The farm has about 400kg of grass per cow.

The September milk statement arrived and a total of 176,600 litres were sold for the month in question and brings the total volume delivered year to date to over 1.17m litres.

Milk cheque

The August milk cheque is worth €74,000 to the farm incl VAT after deductions. As the farm is in a number of the Glanbia fixed-milk price schemes, there are a number of milk prices on the statement.

In total, the statement suggests there were 16,582kg of milk solids delivered over the period so it works out at €4.46 per kilo milk solids.

When we talk about cents per litre the milk price ranged from 37.05c/l for the 2016 fixed scheme to 40.81 c/litre for the manufacturing milk price for September.

The last milk test (17 Oct) shows a result of about 1.55kg of milk solids per cow for the 278 milking cows (16kg per cow at 4.44% protein, 5.41% fat).

Cell count is at 181 SCC, 6 TBC and 4.67% lactose.