In January I headed across to Cork with a group of dairy clients for the Positive Farmers Conference and a visit to Moorepark, the national Animal & Grassland Research and Innovation Centre. The annual Positive Farmers Conference focuses on profitable, efficient, resilient dairy farms and the positive lifestyle benefits these businesses can allow. Having all just about made it safely to Cork from Manchester – only one small issue with airport security and unemptied pockets! – Michael Murphy kicked off the conference discussing the substantial growth in the human population and the struggle for resources to feed and water them. Michael’s message was clear, ‘we need to try to reverse global warming but do so in a way that the world will also be fed’. The issue of food security should be a higher priority for Western countries, ignoring it at our peril.
Maximising grass growth, practising excellent grazing management and removing unprofitable cows (mature cows which are producing less than your herd average kgs of milk solids) from your system were the key points from Fergal Coughlan, dairy farmer and John Maher, Teagasc Moorepark. Only 4.6% of Irish farms are growing >15tDM/ha, and achieving this requires 10 grazings per paddock.
Rhidian Glyn, a new entrant to dairy farming in Wales, gave an inspirational account of how he had successfully set up a 270-cow grass-based system through hard work and determination to succeed. Rhidian shared an insight into his mindset, ‘jump at every opportunity and don’t worry about things outside your control’, leaving us with plenty to think about relating to businesses back home.
Day two of the conference focused on building resilience in your business by becoming a resilient person. Dr Nollaig Heffernan, who specialises in leadership and organisational psychology, discussed how important expectation management is. Most people overestimate what they can achieve daily but underachieve long term. This leads to disappointment, and the higher the expectations, the greater the disappointment. She advised countering this by setting realistic goals, setting deadlines and reviewing them. Habit is an acquired mode of behaviour but can be a saboteur to success. The antidote to habit is self-awareness, business awareness and external input. Highly effective people do the right job at the right time. The day ended with a reminder that ‘health is your wealth’, so with that in mind we headed into Cork for night two to sample the Guinness, Beamish and Murphys!
The following day, a bit blurry eyed, we had a tour around Moorepark which was highly impressive and would be a worthwhile trip for any forward-thinking dairy farmer. The research centre is a huge asset to the Irish dairy industry, where we learnt about some of the current projects including the pasture profit index (PPI), which is a variety selection tool to be used when reseeding that indicates the additional net profit that can be expected by sowing that variety compared to the average performing sward in Ireland. We also toured their multispecies trial plots looking at fertiliser rates, yield, sward composition and possible benefits they may have from an environmental perspective. Trial work at Moorepark has already found that the inclusion of ribwort plantain in grass-clover swards reduces nitrate leaching losses in a variety of soil types. Studies on methane outputs of grazing cows using the ‘GreenFeed’ units, which measure methane while cows are at grazing, were ongoing with cows grazing a variety of sward mixes and reductions of 6% in methane emissions when Bovaer was fed twice daily in parlour cake.
The trip was a great opportunity to get off the farm, focus on goals for 2025 and have plenty of productive debates! Having a good mix of different systems in the group, spring grazers, autumn calvers, all year round 3x and robotic Holstein herds, was one of the highlights of the trip. Excellence can be achieved in any system, with ‘healthy cows, healthy profits and healthy people’ of fundamental importance to all dairy businesses. The lively discussion about strengths, weaknesses and ambitions between a group of proactive dairy clients who would usually not necessarily mix, demonstrated what brilliance we have to offer as an industry and the importance of always having the attitude that you have something to learn.
A huge thank you to MSD for helping to fund the trip.
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