EILIS Helen farms in Donoughmore and milks a 95 cow Holstein Friesian herd in a spring calving system. She believes in a simplified system concentrating on producing high-quality milk off grass and supplementing with grass silage and meal when necessary.

Eilis keeps 25 to 30 replacements in an outside farm which are all AI breed and after two weeks of breeding an Aberdeen Angus (AA) bull is introduced to pick up any repeats.

There is no bull on the home farm which is 100% AI FR & AA. All AA calves are sold to Capper Farms in Co Westmeath for the last number of years and Eilis is very happy with this arrangement as the calves are collected weekly reducing the workload during the busy spring period.

Workload is often a topic of conversation on most farms and here is no different.  Eilis’s niece Kate helps feed calves in the springtime and milks during the summer months. And over the last number of years Eilis has invested in technology and infrastructure to help reduce the workload and improve on farm efficiency. As Eilis said: “Anything to make life easier.”

Eilis has added an auto washer to the 14-unit Delaval milking parlour which has reduced time spent in parlour by over 20 minutes per day which may not sound much but works out at over 80 hours per year.

She invested in a heat and health detection unit to help with the breeding season and animal health and is very happy with this investment as it has reduced the time checking cows and heifers to see if they in heat while improving the submission and conception rates. She finds it really comes into its own after the first three weeks of breeding when the number of cows in heat reduces and it’s harder to spot the cows in heat. Eilis was a bit concerned that the drought and heat might affect the conception rate but after scanning the empty rate was 6% for the cows and all heifers were in calf after a 12-week breeding season.

Normally the summer months are a time on the farm when the workload eases up but this summer has been a busy one on the farm due to the drought. During this drought the cows had access to grass during the day with the gap in diet being filled with silage, palm kernel and meal. Eilis see the benefits of reseeding and no more than this summer as she has noticed that the paddocks reseeded in the last few years were growing more grass than the older swards and allowed her to keep grass in the diet. Thankfully, with the rain in recent weeks grass growth has improved and the silage is gone form the diet. Eilis has completed a fodder budget for the winter and will be ok for the winter as she had a bank of silage in reserve.

She has a block of land which the cows can graze but they need to cross a public road to access it.

“This job was hard to manage on your own as you had to be in front to open the gates and behind the cows at the same time.” Therefore, after much thought it was decided an underpass was needed from a safety and workload point of view, so last October an underpass was erected allowing safe access to this land.

“Due to the very wet spring the tunnel wasn’t completed until April and while it took the cows a day or two to get used of it, I’m very happy with it as now the cows can be left off once milked instead of holding them until after milking.”

Also, from a safety point of view Eilis does not have to worry about meeting cars on the road.

Eilis summed up her thoughts about her career in farming saying: “Well you get the land to mind it and to do your best but farming is a love hate relationship. There are days where everything and more goes wrong and other days where there is nowhere else you’d rather be so you just have to roll with the good and the bad.”

Séamus Lordan is a B&T Dairy Advisor based in the Teagasc Office Macroom