Today we spent the day visiting with “technologists” and seeing their state of the art demonstration farm at the Greenmount Campus. College of Agriculture, Farms and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE) at Greenmount provides various levels of vocational, technical and advanced agriculture degree programs in Northern Ireland. http://www.cafre.ac.uk/index.htmThey have just completed work on a nee dairy demonstration facility. The 150 cow herd has moved off grazing land and into the barn for the winter season. The facility features padded floors at key spots, robotic alley cleaners and an innovative manure/urine separator floor (see image below). The floor scraper separates urine and manure to reduce the mixing that promotes ammonia volatilization. They expect this is several years ahead of an industry that is soon approaching numerous innovations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on farms.

low ammonia alley scraper

On the greener side, we saw horticulture demonstrations, testing numerous late season and winter ornamental crops that could add off season cash flow to nursery and greenhouses. It is not uncommon here for a live

stock farm to also manage an ornamental hoop house for another source of income. Crops include: ornamental cabbage, winter rose and cyclamen(see below)

Local high school vo-ag students, Jim White is on far right

Jim and Teresa White know how to raise heifers.  They just won the National Heifer Rearing Competitionhere in Ireland.  There was a farm walk at their farm in County Tipperary on the 10^th of September.     

Calves at the White’s farm

What is unusual about the White’s farm is not that they weigh calves and heifers 4 or 5  times per year.  What is unusual is that then they do something about it!  They remove the quarter of the animals that are the smallest and put them into their own group.  These heifers get special treatment:  extra feed and the freshest paddocks.    

The White’s milking herd

 Jim and his wife have a milking herd of 106 cows, mostly Friesian, with some Jersey crosses.  They produce spring milk, so their herd is dried off for about 6 weeks, starting in December.  One of their big goals is ‘compact calving.’  They are able to have 78% of their herd freshen within 6 weeks, starting on January 14.  In order to do this, they must really concentrate on breeding cows within a short period of time.  Cows that do not fit the calendar are culled.  (These might be great cows for someone else’s dairy herd).  They also select bulls with shorter gestation periods. 

Emer Kennedy, Teagasc calf specialist

Calves get a good start: they are offered 3 quarts of colostrum within the first hour of birth, the first half hour is their goal, and the calves usually drink 2 quarts or a little more. Then Jim and Teresa continue to take top care of them. Calves are weaned when they are double their birth weight.  The goal is to have the heifers at 60% of their mature weight by 13-14 months to begin breeding so they freshen at 24 months of age. 

George Ramsbottom and James Mullane, Teagasc

The Whites have an interesting system.  They are milking 106 cows now.  But 139 cows and heifers calved this spring and they had 141 calves born.  There were 56 heifers and 58 calves on the farm on the day of the farm walk.  All male calves are sold at about 2 weeks of age, and fresh cows that might not quite fit his breeding program or that have some kind of a problem are culled.  Their goal is to be milking about 150 in 2015, and then raise just enough calves to keep the herd size stable.  They focus on keeping the earliest born calves, with the best genetics, that come from easy-breeding cows for the herd.  And because they have a good herd, other dairy farmers are quite interested in buying dairy cattle from this farm.

Local Vo-Ag students and their teacher

The Whites attention to detail and is what earned them the Heifer Rearing award.  Feeding colostrum, a vaccination plan, weighing heifers to sort and group them, keeping heifers growing, breeding them to freshen at 24 months, and compact breeding and calving were the main points stressed at the farm walk. 

Farmer’s at one of the ‘stands’

The last ‘stand’ at the farm walk was an opportunity to talk about fodder (forage) budgeting with farmers.  According to a survey done in early September by Teagasc, about 20% of the farms in Ireland are short of hay or silage.  Results further showed the country to be about 8% short.  Teagasc advisors are recommending that farmers count and measure their forage supplies.  Then calculate how many head are on the farm now, and are likely to be on the farm come spring.  Farmers surveyed were counting on 140 day barn-feeding period, which seems like a bit of wishful thinking, as 150 days might be more like it (in Vermont it is more like 200 days).  No matter how long the winter might be, the point is to do some figuring now in order to do some buying of feed or selling of animals.  There is a good supply of straw from the wheat and barley crops that can be fed with haylage in a ration for tail enders and dry cows, in order to stretch the home-grown forage supply.