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G rass management is easier, nitrogen requirement is down and there are fewer marginal cows that needed a lot of bought-in feed

Cutting costs: Dermot Heaney is introducing ways to reduce his energy bills

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Dermot checking on his grass

The Signpost farmers on the Lakeland programme recently got a useful talk about how to reduce reducing energy bills on a dairy farm.

J ohn Upton, an energy specialist at Teagasc Moorepark, pointed to night-rate electricity, heat recovery units, plate coolers and variable speed pumps and milk pumps.

His main message was get the basics right first before you go looking at solar panels.

It was good advice. I am planning to make a few changes over the coming weeks and months.

Grass growth is excellent at 70-100kg DM/ha/day. I am measuring grass once a week and walking the farm twice a week to keep a close eye on covers.

I don’t want grass getting out of control. If I walk the farm regularly I can react and take out paddocks on time.

I have taken out surplus bales — four paddocks in total.

In the past I operated at a high stocking rate on the milking platform — 4.5LU/ha. I decided this year to reduce that for a number of reasons, including to reduce nitrogen input and maximise individual animal performance, while matching stocking rate with the average grass growth curve for the farm.

I am at 4.0 LU/ha. I am finding it easier to manage the grass at this stocking rate. We will see how it will impact my profitability at the end of the year but it probably won’t affect it too much as I will have a lot less of these marginal cows that were requiring a lot of bought-in feed to maintain.

Also my nitrogen requirement is a lot less, while I am maintaining milk output from the herd.

I am cutting chemical nitrogen use over the summer to 20 units/ac after each rotation. That’s just 1 unit per day.

In the past I was a much heavier user of chemical N: for the summer I used 27 units per rotation. I had to because of the stocking rate.

Dermot checking on his grass

I am happy with the one unit per day. It’s working for me. I am not sure about reducing to 0.8 units per day, which is what the research is saying… I’ll see how I am going during the summer.

I have stitched in clover on a few paddocks, with some clover already in the sward on April 25. It looks like the new clover seed is coming up well.

I have grazed it twice already and am really careful about grazing it at low covers — 800-1,000kgDM/ha, just to give the clover a chance to establish.

I was a bit annoyed with myself lately: growth took off and one of the paddocks went over 1,000kg. You really do need to keep a close eye on them to avoid covers getting out of control.

These stitched in paddocks will get no N for the rest of the summer but will get some 0 7 30, half a bag every second rotation.

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I also reseeded 10pc of the farm on April 27. Conditions could not have been better with good moisture and great heat.

The breeding season is going well. I have AI’d all cows and heifers.

The heifers were synchronised and we watched for repeats for a week — we picked up 04% repeats.

The stock bull is with the heifers now. We have had three weeks of AI on the cows with a submission rate of 90pc, so I am happy with that.

We invested in heat detection collars this year to make life easier for ourselves. The electronic collars should reduce carbon footprint, in theory at least: lower empty rate plus earlier detection of cow sickness could lower the culling rate and mortality rate.

We will scan everything at 28 days. Its useful to be able to pick up those cows/heifers that are not showing heat but also not in calf.

Doing it early allows us to intervene and sort them problem to get them back in heat.

We used sexed semen for the first round. I picked out high-EBI cows that were calved in February and in good condition (3+).

Dermot Heaney farms at Kilberry, Navan, Co Meath

Advisors: Fergal Maguire, Owen McPartland

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