Patrick Lennon - Killydressy Farm

MILKING THE SYSTEM

As the cows calve they are put out to grass day and night except during very poor weather conditions when they are brought in at night. In 1999 Patrick only had his milking cows in at night for 6 nights. Patrick has 88 cows calving down this year. 60 of them will calve in February, 20 in March and 8 in early April. The secret of making this system work is having the cows calve compactly on the right date, in the right condition and going out to the correct grass cover.

When the group visited him Patrick had 14 cows calved. As mentioned previous these are turned out day and night from calving and fed 2kg of meal and no silage. When cows are fresh calved they have little appetite so Patrick allows them 11kgDM of grass per day. The field is divided up into a series of blocks and grazed from the back towards the front.

FEED BUDGETING

Last year Patrick cut all his silage in one cut in late May. However there was a dry period in June and this left him short of grass so this year he intends to make two small cuts of silage to avoid running into the same problem. Assuming his stock have to be off the grazing ground for three months the silage requirement is 525 tonnes freshweight or 132 tonnes dry matter. However Patrick has 10ha barley ground which he undersows with Italian. This yields 3.3 tonnes of dry matter per hectare and and reduces his silage requirement to 400 tonnes freshweight. Assuming that he will get 20 t/Ha for 1st Cut and 12 t/ha for 2nd cut (adjusted to include in silo losses) he will need to cut 13 hectares for 1st cut and 12 hectares for 2nd cut.

How to Avoid Late Night Calving

Springing cows and heifers are housed in a bedded court at 6.00 pm and turned out to a small sacrifice paddock (about a quarter of an acre) at 8.00 am. Having access to feed at night only virtually eliminates late night calving. This is proven by farmer experience north and south of the border.