This buildings focus visits Graze Dairy, where the Gray family have recently invested into their family dairy farm by building a new cubicle shed, which compliments a brand new parlour.
Mark Gray is milking 97 cows on 150ac in Caragh, Co. Kildare in partnership with his mother and father, where they have recently ventured into selling milk from their farm.
On their home farm, they rear their own heifers, cut all their silage off the home block and have designated paddocks for the milking platform.
Mark had recently been working in construction for many years, until he decided to come and farm in partnership with his parents in 2015, where he looked to excel the business forward.
Since coming home to farm, Mark has emphasised that the breeding and genetics were already up to scratch, but realised that if he wanted to get the best out of his cows, he was going to have to invest in the facilities.
They decided to upgrade their farm facilities and looked for an opportunity to bring an extra bit of income to the farm and fund the investment they made.
Along with the new build dairy facilities, Mark with his wife Kate decided to set up a shop on the farm, selling their own milk from a vending machine.
Buildings focus
Mark and Brian decided that they needed to upgrade their milking facilities and cubicle shed in order to continue the family farm in a serious way.
They completed the building of a new 16-unit DeLaval parlour with swing over arms and automatic cluster removers last year, while leaving space for another four units if they ever decided to expand further.
The Grays were milking in a six-unit parlour before the new parlour was put in, and it was taking up to three hours every morning and evening to milk the cows.
Mark said that the having the cows standing in the yard for over six hours a day took its toll on the cows conception rates and production, meaning something had to change.
The handling facilities have been a great addition to the farm, as it is extremely easy to load cattle up into the crush with the 360° gate to dose, artificially inseminate (AI), scan cows, or to do whatever you please.
Speaking of the 360° gate, Mark said, “when you’re loading up anxious heifers, before they can even think, they are swung around and into the crush”.
“Investing into good handling facilities has saved us so much time and hassle and takes the stress out of jobs for man and beast,” Mark added.
Mark intends to add in a three-way drafting unit that will link up to the tags in the cows’ ears so he can draft out cows that are in heat for the breeding season, or cows that have an illness or feet problems.
This will further add to the cow flow and efficiency of the farm which is the goal for the fray family; making everything as easy and straight forward as possible.
Mark and Brian have also put up a new cubicle shed, which has 90 cubicles and 120 feed spaces, and is located directly behind the parlour.
The cubicle shed has made life easier for the Grays, as it is easily accessed for feeding silage and is right behind the parlour leaving it an easy job for getting the cows in for milking.
There are three passageways in the cubicle shed, each installed with hydraulic scrapers that bring the slurry directly to the slatted tank.
Mark told Agriland that the parlour and shed compliment each other as it is just requires one gate to be opened and they are in the parlour.
Mark, along with a great help from Jason Cole and his sons Fintan and Murray, built the milking parlour and cubicle sheds themselves.
This included all the foundations, steel work, steel erecting, shuttering, concrete and the the two slurry tanks that were also installed.
“Without the help of the Coles, I would still be on the building stage,” Mark added.
This hard work and dedication to get the farm to an enjoyable and easy to work stage has also complimented the farm shop.
Along with the new build, Mark built a designated room for the pasteuriser where he transfers the milk from the pasteuriser to a trolley, which is then brought down to the shop.
However, Mark told Agriland that building and investing heavily in 2023 was not the easiest as milk price was great in 2022, but 2023 proved to be severely challenging for dairy farmers.
“We were trying to invest and get going with the project, but costs were through the roof and milk price was on the floor,” he added.
Through persistency, hard work and having the ability to do a lot of the work without any help, Mark was able to set himself and his family up with an easy-managed dairy enterprise.