During the week, Agriland made the trip west to Co. Galway to an open day on the farm of Tom McWalter, just outside Milltown.
Tom opened his farm to the public as part of Lely Centre Mullingar’s week-long farm open days showcasing robotic milking.
The Galway-native was originally a suckler and sheep farmer and still to this day, a few sucklers and sheep can be found dotted around the farm; however, the focus is now mainly on the new dairy enterprise.
Tom milks a herd of 134 British-cross Holstein cows – with a hint of Jersey genetics also running through the herd – through two robots.
Speaking to Agriland about his decision to move away from sucklers and sheep and head down the dairy route, Tom said: “The main reason for changing was for my family. My kids didn’t have a huge interest in the sucklers or the sheep, but did for dairy.
“So I weighed up my options and looked at how I would get into dairy and what the best route would be for me to take.
“I thought about putting in a conventional parlour but, at my age, I wasn’t gone on the idea of milking cows twice-a-day for the bulk of the year – as I have a few pains and aches already.
“So we thought the robotic system of milking might suit us. So after consideration and speaking to farmers and going out to see robots in action we said this looks like the way forward for us.”
Making use of existing buildings to tie in a new 62-cubicle house
Tom made full use of existing buildings on the farm in Galway to facilitate the move to dairy. The sole major building work on the farm involved putting up a 62-cubicle shed on an old silage slab which was sandwiched in between the original suckler and sheep housing facilities.
This tied in an old cubicle shed to the new cubicle shed – where the robots are – to the other buildings on the opposite side, where further cubicles, calving and calf penning areas can be found.
A detailed layout of the new cubicle shed, separation area, calving area and calf shed can be seen (below).
To keep the costs down, Tom was able to do a lot of the work involved in constructing the cubicle house.
He was able to dig out the site and help with putting in the tanks and the cubicle beds – with the only work not completed by the Galway native being the shed itself and the installation of the cubicles.
The shed was sourced and erected by DG Roofing, while the cubicles were sourced from Teemore Engineering, with Tom fitting them in himself.
Putting in 2 Lely Astronaut A5’s
Having looked around, as already mentioned, at conventional brands, as well as various brands of robots, Tom said he was drawn to the Lely Astronaut A5, particularly the backup service that came with it.
Speaking about his choice, Tom said: “A robot is no good to me without having a good backup service.
“You need to know that when you pick up the phone, that someone is going to be there on the other end of the phone to pick it up and talk you through any issues that you might have.
“I heard from other people that the backup service was good with Lely and that swayed me in that direction.
“From speaking to Niall McGauran from the Lely Centre in Mullingar I knew what direction I wanted to go and we decided to put in two Lely A5 Astronauts.”
‘The information you get from the robots was a big plus’
Tom said that coming from a suckler and sheep background, his knowledge of dairy wasn’t that strong.
This was more of why he went the robotic route, as the information you can get about your cows from it helps to make that transition over easier and brings you up to speed much quicker, he said.
The Galway man added: “Coming in as a new entrant to dairy, it’s a big change from what we were doing previously obviously.
“So, by going with robots, we felt that with the information you can get back from them about your cows was going to be a huge help to us and make the transition over that bit easier.
“A couple of examples I could give would be, first of all knowing what your cows are producing. It helps you to identify the good ones from the bad ones.
“This in turn, helps you to determine how much feed [concentrates] to feed them. Cows producing the goods are obviously getting that bit more meal, while at the opposite end of the scale, the poorer yielders are getting less.
“This helps keep the meal bill down and then obviously, helps you to determine what cows should be culled.
“It helps to identify any cows not producing the goods or any with a high somatic cell count (SCC).
“It also tells you how long a cow is milking for and I’ll tell you a good one, we had a cow last year and she was taking an awfully long time to milk and we decided to go suss out what was the reason.
“It ended up one of her quarters was taking over 20 minutes to milk, so we culled her at the back end of last year.
“I’d say, on average, cows are about seven to eight minutes in the robot being milked.
“There’s a nice steady flow of cows in and out throughout the day and it’s working out well for us, I must say.”
Grazing infrastructure
As well as building a new cubicle shed and tying existing sheds to it, Tom had to look beyond that as well and think about putting in new roadways and a suitable water system.
Narrow roadways for cow traffic only were laid down and water troughs were placed along the roadway.
Again, costs were kept low, as stone from the digging out of the tanks was used for the new roadways – which Tom was able to lay down himself.
All isn’t quite complete on the grazing end, currently, cows are working off an AB system of grazing rather than an ABC – with Tom in the middle of laying roadways and reseeding ground that will become block C.
However, it is working out quite well for Tom, because he has had the luxury of having a lot of surplus grass as it is – with a lot of bales sitting in the yard for next winter.
He said: “In time we will be working off an ABC system of grazing; however, at the minute block C has just been reseeded (pictured below).
“It’s actually worked out well we didn’t have block C yet because we have had a good shot of grass and have to take a good bit out as surplus bales.
“In time, when we push cow numbers up a bit more, we will be ready to take them.”
Cost
Tom, like many other farmers in Galway and across the country, made use of the Targeted Agriculture Modernisation Scheme (TAMS II) – which saw him eligible for a 40% grant.
This went some way of easing the blow of moving into dairy. The sale of his suckler cows and his flock of ewes also helped to make the conversion over to dairy possible.
The cost of the entire project with the grant and VAT claimed back came to €307,858.
When asked was he happy to make the move into dairy in the end up, Tom said: “Look, I wanted to have the farm set up in a way, where if one of my family wanted to come back home and take over, at least they could.
“They like the dairy side of things and didn’t have much grá for the sucklers or sheep, so I had a decision to make and I made it in the best interests of my family.
“I would have kept going what I was doing, but I’m happy all the same that we changed over. We still aren’t finished yet on the building side of things, we need to add in more cubicles, while on the management side of things, I need to sharpen up on the grass end of it and get better at it.
“But, going back to your question, I’m happy and the family are we made the move. It’s working well and both the cows and ourselves have taken to the robotic way of milking very well,” Tom concluded.
