Alex sets out his dairy herd's vaccinations, fertiliser and forage plans
Picture Alex Limerick In Dairy Mikling At Linehan The Mccarthy Farmer Dan Co Farm The Feenagh, Parlour On Family
Current production is 26.4 litres/cow/day, at 3.63% butterfat and 3.62% protein. Cows are delivering over 1.97kg of milk solids per day on 3.5 kg of meal. SCC is currently 84, which is very satisfactory.
Breeding started on our farm on April 27. The cows were all artificially inseminated (AI), with no bull let out at any stage so we have stopped AI the first week of July and are happy with the conception rates so far.
There are two cows that are potentially cycling but we aren’t concerned about them as they were the later calving cows this spring. We will hopefully do a scan the end of July. The bull has been taken away from the heifers also. They got a worm dose this week as a result of completing a faecal egg test.
Our average farm cover is currently 510kg DM/ha, with a cover per cow of 177kg.
Our pre-grazing yields are 1,400kg DM/ha at the moment, with cows doing a very good job on graze-outs. Our current demand is 43 while growth is 59, so this will give us a chance to build up some grass cover and take some pressure off, so that we can reduce the volume meal being fed from 4.5kg.
We have not got the chance to make many high-quality surplus bales yet this year, so we are hoping for that opportunity over the coming few weeks. Silage for second-cut is growing away and is on target. We hope to be cutting it in the next one to two weeks. There is approximately 70 acres closed at the moment.
We gave the calves their first IBR vaccine this week. The programme we run on our farm consists of a live dose at four to six months of age. All animals then receive a dead vaccine when the cows are dry, which is typically the end of December.
The clover paddocks with the appropriate level of clover are helping us to make savings on chemical nitrogen as we can give some of them less, and some of them receive no chemical nitrogen at all. We have used all our slurry now for 2024. We applied the last round of it to the new ground on the milking platform in order to try to help build the P & K indexes on that.
We held an event on Tuesday, June 18 in conjunction with Teagasc and Kerry Agribusiness. We were pleased with the large crowd in attendance on the day, and topics that were discussed included the management of clover swards for the summer, the management of reseeds with clover, the level of clover required to allow chemical N reduction and nutrient management over the next two months to ensure fodder stocks for the winter are replenished.
- Alex McCarthy farms alongside his mother and father, Mary Ita and Michael, in Feenagh, Co Limerick, and is a Dairy Signpost Demonstration Farmer on the Teagasc Kerry Agribusiness Joint Programme.
