The Dunne brothers believe the production restriction drives management decisions that would otherwise not make good business sense, like having to quit 80 cows as they come into peak milk this season.
The quota year runs from March 31 to March 31 rather than the seasonal dairy year that runs from February 1 to December. Thanks to a poor growing season through Ireland’s summer (June July) last year, the Dunnes still had quota available to them at the start of this current season. But to make sure they made use of it they had to carry more cows at the beginning of the season than they know they can safely carry to stay under their 1.1m litre quota for the coming season.
So they’ve carried an extra 80 cows and calved them to get the additional milk but in March they’ll sell them and milk the rest of the season with around 220 cows.
Along with the abolition of quotas, Tom expects changes will come to the single farm payment (SFP) system that allows farmers to receive payments for various farming and non-farming practices such as keeping hedgerows and their margins for wildlife. Land owners require lessees to pay the value of SFP back to them even though they’re not actively farming the land themselves.
The Government can’t afford to allow people to keep “farming the brown envelope” and once SFP’s aren’t quite so lucrative to landowners he expects the cost of lease land will come down, enabling more expansion by existing dairy farmers.
New investment
Tom Dunne was involved in EU negotiations that set environmental standards for Ireland.
The Dunnes pump their slurry into their own 16,000 litre slurry tanker and spread it with a trailing shoe that applies the slurry directly to the ground rather than spraying it out widely over pasture.
As part of their development the brothers have concreted a large area where silage is kept as well as the used straw bedding. Leachate from the silage can be diverted into an underground channel that goes to the slurry lagoon while other dirty water from the yard ends up in a reed bed filtration area that acts as a constructed wetland. The idea is the dirty water passes through the reed bed and is partially “cleaned”, trapping sediment and phosphorous (P) as well as other nutrients.
Any drainage water coming from the reed bed runs downhill along an open drain to another wetland that contains other “bog plants” before it moves on to a third wetland area and eventually drains to a river. River water quality is frequently tested and doesn’t draw any cause for concern from the regulatory authorities.
The Dunnes’ slurry lagoon is clay-lined and was built prior to regulations tightening up. When the regulations came in just over a year ago the brothers were fined, losing a portion of their EU administered single farm payment (SFP). To get it back they had to appeal the decision and get the local council to approve it which required getting an engineering report to show it didn’t leak.
Tom has been involved in the EU bureaucracy first hand in his position as chair of the Irish Farmers Association environment committee. He travelled to Brussels to negotiate with the EU Commission’s environment directorate committees on agriculture and among other achievements helped ensure slurry storage requirements were less onerous than the original proposals, which could have meant several season’s storage would be have been needed.
Top fertility
The Dunnes, and their father Michael before them, have focussed heavily on breeding their animals for fertility and now have a high economic breeding index (EBI) herd, similar to NZ’s breeding worth (BW) but with a stronger weighting on fertility. Their herd of Norwegian Reds has an EBI of 154 and is among the top 30 herds in Ireland for EBI, containing the second best cow in the country for fertility breeding value (BV).
From a nine-week mating period they have an empty rate of 6% with no intervention. A benefit of having expansion restricted by quotas has been heavy culling of any animal that doesn’t measure up.
Cows go onto OAD milking just after mating and stay on that regime for the rest of the season.
The 4km long narrow farm runs up-hill so OAD reduces walking through the season. Milking twice-a-day (TAD) would require a third full-time staff member at a cost of around $70,000/year.
Milking OAD hasn’t caused mastitis problems, with Irish research finding a significantly lower incidence in Norwegian Reds.
Cows are turned out to pasture immediately after calving and although the aim is to graze to a residual of 1650kg drymatter (DM)/ha they aren’t restricted in their pasture allocations. The brothers close up the paddocks in November and bring the cows into the wintering shed to milk for the last few weeks, to ensure good covers are built up before winter. Concentrate or cake is fed in the farm dairy at a rate of around 2kg DM/cow/day.
In line with Irish tradition Tom owns the family farm and Michael owns another property nearby which operates as part of the family farm. The abolition of quotas will help the brothers expand and the plan is to buy a new farm that Michael and his family will own separately, with his existing land incorporated into the original family farm.
