Dairy focus: Simple cow nutrition works on Kilkenny farm – Agriland.ie

Agriland attended the Irish Pure Freisian Open Day where Pat and Claire Cleary spoke about how they run their farm business effectively through simple cow nutrition.

The Carrickshock Herd consists of 206 pedigree pure friesian milking cows, with the entire herd registered annually.

Pat keeps approximately 40 pedigree bull calves every year to sell as breeding bulls the following year.

The overall focus on the farm is to breed high quality pure friesian, as the breed has a lot to offer, with sustainability, fertility, dairying traits while balancing productivity with versatility.

The Clearys have had a number of of bulls purchased by AI companies in Ireland and the UK, with the most notable bull being Carrickshock GTW, who took the top spot on the UK PLI daughter-proven rankings.

Even though breeding, good blood lines and genetics is at the helm of the Cleary family operation, maintaining good, yet simple nutrition is crucial for the Carrickshock Herd.

Early spring

Heather Peppard of Brett Brothers spoke on the day about how Pat Cleary does everything on a consistent basis and does the basics very well.

The Clearys were traditionally milking all year-round, but this year went fully spring calving with cows starting to calve on January 10.

“It’s really important to say that grass and the utilisation of grass and good quality forage is pivotal to the financial profitability,” Peppard said.

Pat aims to have his cows out around February 10-15 and he typically succeeds with this, as it is quite a dry farm.

Grassland management is crucial on the farm, as he always has a good cover of grass in front of the cows and never forces cows out to grass during early spring.

Instead, he assesses conditions on a day-to-day basis for the first month to six weeks.

Simple cow nutrition

Making quality silage is another key element to the farm’s success, as Pat tries to cut his silage around May 10, to ensure high dry matter (DM) and quality.

Cleary has six out blocks which allows him to have plenty of silage for the coming winter, as he has learned form his father to “never, ever, ever run out of silage”.

He currently has 1000 bales of silage in the yard which are stacked and sorted by quality. The six out blocks allows him to grow grass outside of the farm and sort silage for dry cows and milking cows.

The lower quality, coarser and lower dry matter silage can be put aside for the dry cows which just simplifies his feeding during the winter. Peppard spoke about the importance of good silage and the importance of cows being able to access it.

“You can have the best feed in the world or have the best diet, but if the cows can’t get access to it or the silage is not as good as what I’m told, that’s where things will start to fall down,” he said.

Once the cows calve, they are transitioned to grass, operating on a flat rate feeding system.

There is a diet feeder on the farm but there is no extra ration going into it as it is just grazed grass and grass silage with a good quality dairy nut in the parlour making up the diet.

The cows are fed about 1.2 to 1.3 tonnes of concentrates/year and start off in early lactation on about 6kg/day until Cleary is 100% sure that the cows are eating a sufficient amount of grass outside.

The cows receive at an absolute minimum 18 kg DM with some cows getting 22-23kg DM while producing about 26 litres of milk at the moment.

“When it come to feeding the cow for the breeding season, all the mineral nutrition comes from the dairy nut, a nut that would have trace minerals of higher level.” stated Pepppard.

The farm has been soil tested on tested on numerous occasions and has high molybdenum, so Cleary’s make sure there is copper in the dairy nut to ensure their is available copper during the breeding season.

Monitoring body condition score at the start of the breeding season is a priority on the farm, however, poor condition does not seem to be a problem with the pure friesian herd.

Thinner cows would get a bit of a top up in the parlour if needed, as Pat and Claire Cleary don’t have a feed to yield feeders but will always give extra meal according to cow’s situation.

The dry cows will receive a dry mineral during the winter months with a coarser silage. There is no straw added to the dry cow diet as the quality silage with the mineral is sufficient.

Cow and calf performance

The Carrickshock herd is a sustainable herd in that there friesian bulls are not a by-product as there is a huge demand for their bulls.

Peppard talked about the quality of the bulls being reared on the farm as she has seen them being put onto a beef a nut and going out to grass as good as any limousin.

“For me, sustainability is having a cow, that calves down, she goes back in calf, she responds to nutrition and she has a calf that’s not a byproduct.” Peppard added.

There is usually about 40 friesian bulls kept on the farm each year but with the introduction of the nitrates banding, the Cleary’s had to sell a few calves this spring.

The farm is currently running on 216kg N/ha with the cows producing 7,000kg/milk at 3.54% fat and 4.29% protein.

These performance results are down to the herds genetics combined with simple cow nutrition by feeding good quality silage and grass.

Every single calf on the farm gets whole milk from birth to weaning and they are left with their mother for the first 24 hours post calving as it guarantees every single calf get their required colostrum.

The calves will receive three litres of whole milk morning and evening for the first six weeks, followed by once day feeding of about 4.5 litres which will then see them being weaned very strong at about 12 weeks of age.

Heather Peppard summed up the nutrition of the herd and the overall business operation as a simple grass based system that optimises good quality grass and silage.