While the views over Lough Foyle on a clear, sunny day relieve some of the heartache to farming in the hills of Donegal, the wet days must make you ask questions.

Evolving from a farm that grew potatoes and sheep, Sean Lynch has developed a good dairy business. From a start of 59,000 litres of milk quota in 1983, an 80-hour course completed in 1982 convinced Sean that more milking cows was the way to go.

Lagan Creamery was the purchaser at the time but, since then, Donegal Creameries and Aurivo have taken up the milk purchasing job. The Lagan plant passed through Kerry, Larry Goodman and is with Lakeland now. Remember, it’s a nice drive to just about anywhere really – almost an hour and half to Killygordon and four and a half hours to Ballaghaderreen for milk processing.

So, in 1987, with a five-unit parlour and 30-odd cows, Sean started to get serious about cows. Milk recording drove the milk quality change with the help of Sean’s local vet clinic and Teagasc adviser.

Today, Sean is able to walk cows to 25ha with 36ha farmed in total. This year, 72 cows will be milked, taking overall stocking rate to 2.7 cows/ha.

Given the limitations on land, Sean supplements the grass diet with about one tonne of meal fed per cow.

Sean is clear on his clean milk policy.

He said: “You can’t get clean milk from dirty cows. When inside, we run scrapers regularly to keep muck off the passageways. When you are limited on land base, the key is to maximise the milk price by keeping all the milk quality bonuses. The other game changer for driving milk solids for us has been getting cows out early to grass in February. It drives the protein and starts cleaning up cows after a few months inside.”

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