how many cows per acre?

Duffmanic

how many dairy cows could you milk off a 90 acre farm, the land is very dry with good grass, there are 50 cows being milked on it at the moment fairly handy, i was thinking of expanding without over doing it, im fairly new to farming so would be appreciate ur advice?

squod

Ask one of your neighbours, might have more experience. One cow per acre I hear. Might also look into renting some nearby land for silage.

Shauny2010

Depends on the Land and part of the country your in.
There's Dairy farmers in the golden vale who are keeping 2.5 cows per acre, but its great land, there at it a long time and have loads of experience.
Its better to have a few less than too many as there's nothing worst than running short on grass especially with a big herd

Injuryprone

Shauny2010 wrote: »

Depends on the Land and part of the country your in.
There's Dairy farmers in the golden vale who are keeping 2.5 cows per acre, but its great land, there at it a long time and have loads of experience.
Its better to have a few less than too many as there's nothing worst than running short on grass especially with a big herd

Are you sure about that figure? They must be inside a lot of the time!! Are you sure it isn't 2.5 cows / Ha?

Injuryprone

Oh and OP, as far as I know, 1 LU / acre (2.5LU / Ha) is a reasonable figure. I say LU as you have to take into account the younger stock that will be on the farm as well.

P.S. super dry land is great, but this year we were very appreciative of the wettish part of our farm as very little grass grew in the dry parts during the drought periods of the summer.

My advice would be to build them up slowly and you'll soon find out what the farm can take.

poor farmer

running 80 on 60 acres only average land but all reseeded, made about 200 bales of grazing block rest of fodder drew in from out farms.feeding about 1 tonne per cow using alot of nitrogen.i find we have better quality grass and better solids when we upped the numbers.

Tipp Man

Assuming the land is of reasonable quality then you should aim for 90-100 cows on this farm, keeping calves and replacements on outside land. This is without being too tightly stocked and putting yourself under too much pressure.

Of course you need a better parlour and more facilities for 100 cows so I would weigh up all the costs before jumping right in

IMO having dry land is far easier to manage than having wet land on this little island of ours

5live

According to dept rules you can keep 2 livestock units/ ha so you would be looking at 72 cows on 90 acres without getting a derogation on stocking rates. At the maximum derogation, you are looking at 90 cows on 90 acres(2.5 lu/ha) and the other stock on other land. The P and K levels would want to be at index 3(or better!) and as a previous poster had said, housing and slurry storage has to be in place before the animal is on the ground. Best of luck and keep us posted on how it is going:)

candor

On derogation does that apply to just one parcel of land or is it spread over all parcels of land?

5live

Stocking rate applies to all land as far as i know. Once over 2 cows /ha you will need a derogation

Duffmanic

thanks for the advice, i was thinking 70 cows max on 90 acres, i was thinking of renting land just for the first cut of silage, at the moment we are cutting the silage off the 90 acres so that would give us more grass. if i could get up to 80/90 cows without being over stocked that would be great. il start gradually and build up year by year.

babybrian

I think alot of dairy farmers would be in around the 2.8cows/HA on the grazing platform. So if you work it out like that then you would manage about 100 but then again it depends where u are and how much grass the farm can grow. Were stocked at 3/HA and its just too high because the farm hasnt enough reseeded ground and just cant grow enough grass so might bring it back down to 2.8 next year.

workingstudent

it all depends on how much grass you can grow..if you could manage it properly you could have up to 110 cows...go onto the irish grassland association website to calculate how much you could grow....all this coming from my father now!!

case885

If your keeping younger stock on different farm and bring in silage then you could milk 140 easy. At the moment we have 240 animals 65 acres at home and 50 outside farm but we fatten cattle indoors.

mantua

Injuryprone wrote: »

P.S. super dry land is great, but this year we were very appreciative of the wettish part of our farm as very little grass grew in the dry parts during the drought periods of the summer.

.

What Drought???? It rained nearly everyday last summer

Tipp Man

mantua wrote: »

What Drought???? It rained nearly everyday last summer

It's an old thread:D

mahoney_j

What is the correct stocking rate is a difficult question to ask.If land is dry and is mostly reseeded you could stock it at 3 cows /hectare most years.It is a hell of a lot easier to keep grass under control at a higher stocking rate rather than a low one,On a normal year though!!.Second piece of advice dont just go and move from 50 cows to 90 or 100 straiht away.There is still ahell of a lot 50 and 60 cow men out there that could teach guys milking 100 plus a few things.More cows dont mean more money and rember we have another 2 and a bit years of quota regime left and unless we get another year like 2012 there will be serious superlevy problems