Teebor15 wrote: » Just saw on the Journal theres a lad near New Ross milking 500 cows in one herd..is it the largest in Ireland?
PMU wrote: » anyone see the tv3 prog. about dairying this evening,was it good?
F.D wrote: » On a slightly different note, i often wonder do the econmies of scale pay off on these farms, for example would the profit margin still be the same if you had 50 cows vs 500 obviously you would have a bigger turn over, but would your profit margin be higher
Tipp Man wrote: » a lot of those big guys are in debt up to their necks and beyond A guy milking 100 cows and little to no borrowings is probably a hell of a lot better off than them Also the guy with 100 cows is a lot less likely to go broke than a 500 cow herd with millions borrowed
sh1tstirrer wrote: » Tom Browne seems very down to earth. That other fella the baldly one has some opinion of himself and his farming :rolleyes: Why do farmers now have to copy NZ with their milking platform what happen to calling it the grazing area?
ihatetractors wrote: » You mean castle annaghs?, only reson that's featured is its largest farm baught by a farmer in last few years... it's some set-up.. 3k internal tared/concrete roadways iirc. Walked around it in 09, for a gawk when it was up for sale
LCruiser Kid wrote: » No. The biggest or one of the biggest is down here not that fierce far from me actually. Tom Browne. Seen him on TV3's farming programme last night. Milking 620 cows and hopes to head for 1000. Some serious set up there in fairness. :cool: Definately agree on his method for measuring grass . Agree 100% with him.
PMU wrote: » he was too dismissive of grass measuring,eyeballing all the time is guesswork only.while i am here,why are people on this forum so anti new zealand methods of dairying, they work well for many farmers in this country aswell.
jeff greene wrote: » Mmmm, seems to have served him well so far:rolleyes:. I'm not anti NZ, this is Ireland, we have winters, small fragmented farms, quotas, different attitude to land and animal welfare etc. We graze cows cause we always have not cause NZ has shown us. In these programes NZ is always brought up, why?
linebacker52 wrote: » New Zealand has some of the best dairy farmers in the world.why shouldn't we be trying what they do over here if it's doesn't work go back to what you did before.a new Zealand type system is working very well for me here.
Tipp Man wrote: » so what is castle annaghs like? good quality land? just looking at it in the journal this week, does any of it flood? It has a lot of boundary with the river
John_F wrote: » yes, prob the cheapest nation to produce milk . . . but this is ireland : quotas, nitrates regulations, weather, public perception, farm inspections, registration of all cattle, farm size / scale, family farms, farm owner is the farm manager mostly, difficult for young person not from a farm to start off dairying. not new zealand (particularly canterbury / taranaki): wide tracks of land, ideal grazing weather, contract fert spreading by company who sells fert, unlimited production if a farmer wishes to purchase more shares it is available, public see dairy farms as a large businesses with many people involved (owner, share milkers, investors) as opposed to here where it is a family run operation, very easy to progress to farm ownership, v little traceability with a 'dead hole' on every farm i saw, and even earthquakes . sure we can learn a few things from nz... dairy industry restructuring, paddock sizes and roadways, calf rearing etc. but they do have things to learn from us: environmental factors, cow welfare, dry cow therapy, traceability..all factors which are down the road for nz. fair play to you for running what you call a nz system .. but i call a nz system on which cows are out wintered on kale and baleage, calved on the kale, moved to the grazing platform, colostrum sold to fonterra, late calves induced, bull calves killed after being born, heifers only tagged with a jumbo tag for the farm, heifer calves moved off to a contract rearer and paid by how many kgs they gain, sick cows killed and put into a dead hole, a mobile abattoir that comes to kill a few heifers for the freezer. . . what else? :pac: I think Ireland has some of the best dairy farmers in the world, not New Zealand am i jealous of nz... kind of, but the problems we have with red tape will soon be something they have to deal with saw last nights programme, very interesting to see the 3 operations! whats the story with tom brown LCrusier Kid? did he inherit much of what he is farming now and purchase more. some operation hes running in fairness
LCruiser Kid wrote: » I don't know for certain, but I know he bought land to expand. Think he had tillage too before. Top class set up. Probably inherited the farm and expanded from there on in I presume.
linebacker52 wrote: » http://www.ayearontheland.com/2011/01/11/tom-browne/ some info about him here
bealaha wrote: » interesting piece on tom browne, it mentions dat he got out of dairying because der was no money in it, but in fact he went broke due to payin too high a price for land locally, but luckily for him he was paid by d EU at d time to get out of dairying, due to the milk lakes building up in europe. at the time he was quite large at that stage 250+ cows. then he was able to get his quota back in early 1990's and since then he has been growing his business, and fair play too him he he has great drive and ambition. sumthing interesting for ye, that the big new shed he built is actually half of an airport hanger, another 650 cows farmer down here in cork went halves with him for it.
Rotary reduces the workload Two years ago it was taking two men two and a half hours morning and evening, (five hours in total), to milk the 350 cows on Tom Browne's dairy farm near Killeagh, in East Cork. The milking was then done in a 22-unit herringbone parlour and Tom was not a happy man. Since then, he has invested in a 60-unit Dairymaster Rotary parlour and the improvement in milking time has been dramatic. The 350 cows are now being milked by two men in one hour, morning and evening (two hours in total). One man puts on the clusters while the other is involved in drafting, etc. Virtually everything else is automated. When each cow is finished milking, the clusters are automatically removed and she walks through a crate where her udder is automatically sprayed. She then enters a three-way drafting system where the transponder in her ear is scanned as she passes the screen and this is used to dictate which direction she is sent. This can be pre-programmed or decided as the cow goes onto the milking platform. After two years in use, Tom Browne is extremely happy with the performance of this parlour, which cost €355,000 for the machine, plus an additional €200,000 for the building and ancillary fittings. He draws attention to the fact that this machine is capable of milking 500 cows, so he would still like to acquire more quota, if possible. The average yield of this herd, last year, was 1,420 gallons per cow, on 500-600 kilos of meal, but Tom does not expect to match that this year. Tom's 350 cows are managed as one herd and had previously been grazed in 12-hour paddocks. Since moving to 2.5-3 day paddocks (five-acre paddocks) the cows seem much less stressed, protein levels have gone way up and the system is much less demanding on labour and management skills. He now questions whether or not they were getting enough to eat in the small paddocks. A further change in his approach to feeding is that, having tried maize silage for a number of years, he now believes that it is overrated and has given up using it. He argues that, if grass silage can be made at 75-80 DMD, it is hard to beat.
