For this week’s Buildings Focus, Agriland made the trip to just outside Clones in Co. Monaghan to speak to new entrant to dairy, Tommy O’Harte.

Tommy, who up until last year ran a well-known suckler enterprise made up predominately of Limousins, decided that after a period of the farm recording a loss, the next move for the farm was to switch to dairy.

The process of making the move to dairy came about in spring in 2021 and despite being told he would not be milking cows by autumn of last year, within the space of two months, the building work required to get the farm up and running – and cows milking – was completed.

Tommy O’Harte

Speaking to Agriland on his farm, Tommy said: “It got to a stage where it wasn’t making sense to continue how we were operating and as such, we made the decision to move to dairy.

“Coming from heavy ground, there were times when the sucklers, as they were big cows, that they would be indoors during the summer months some years if any wet weather came.

“So, taking into account the land type and the type of cow we wanted to milk, we decided to go with a predominately indoor system, calving all-year round.

“Even though we are milking currently, we are still expanding. We are currently milking 70 cows but plan to push that – all going well – to 190 once we have completed all the necessary building work, and once we can start getting out own-bred stock into the system and milking.”

Converting the existing slatted shed

In order to make the move to dairy, Tommy had to re-jig his five-bay existing slatted shed.

What once were 10 pens split five each side of a centre-feeding passageway now consists of three rows of back-to-back cubicles, with a feeding passageway at either side of the shed all under the one roof.

The feed barriers mostly consist of diagonal ones, which originated from the old shed, while one bay of the shed has headlocking barriers fitted in it.

Rather than going with concrete beds and a mat on each of the cubicles, Tommy beds his cattle with peat which he sources from his main off-farm business.

The cost of keeping the cows on peat per week is roughly costing €150-160/week. However, Tommy is looking at the idea of using chopped up straw which he believes might come in cheaper at in around €100/week.

Recently, Tommy got the concrete floors in the shed grooved and at the front of the shed, where cows go to milk is where the slatted tank is, the slats are fitted with rubber mats that came from Belgium. In this area, water troughs can be found along with a robotic scraper.

The shed currently has the capacity to hold between 350,000-450,000 gallons of slurry which Tommy says is spread using low emission slurry spreading (LESS) equipment on the farm and is readily available to use with the help of a slurry aeration system.

Robotic milking

The move to robotic milking was one Tommy had his mind made up on from an early stage and to get a greater insight into not only how robots worked, but also what cow type would also suit him and the farm, he visited a number of farms, particularly in Northern Ireland.

Originally, the idea was to potentially go with a herd of Holstein Friesian cows. However, through further research, Tommy’s head turned towards Fleckviehs.

From here he went about importing Fleckvieh cows and heifers from Austria. These cows are being milked through two Lely Astronaut A5s sourced from Lely Center Mullingar, who Tommy also sourced his Lely Vector from.

Of 104 cows milked over the last year, 92 were first lactation and the herd is on target to produce 7000kg of milk and over 500kg of milk solids.

Tommy has been impressed with the cows’ temperament, robustness and most importantly, their performance to date. He said he is excited to see how the cows perform in the future as the herd matures.

Cows at the time of Agriland’s visit were averaging 2.7 milkings/day and producing, on average, 24L and currently 242 days, on average, in milk.

He added that the move to robotics for the cows and his team has been seamless.

Tommy said that of the cows on the farm, only 10 had seen a robot before and the rest of the mature cows and heifers have taken to the robotic system well.

A nice feature of the build is actually behind the robots where two footbaths, one for each robot, were constructed that are actually outside the shed – which cows can walk through when diverted by the robot and enter back into the shed.

While in his office looking over the entire shed, Tommy spoke about the information he can get from his cows from the robots.

This information not only tells you about how your cows are doing he said, but also that robotic milking frees up time for the team to focus on other jobs – which is a massive benefit.

Tommy said that the farm manager, Eddie, spends 20 minutes every morning on the computer, checking on the cows and making sure everything is okay.

Eddie said that the time he has now to focus on jobs and ensuring the system is running at 100% is so much more that he said that when the sucklers were on the farm that he was busier and “constantly chasing his tail”.

Automatic feeding system

When speaking about what he is doing on the farm, Tommy spoke about consistency and importance of it.

One area he said was key in having consistent was that of his cows’ diet.

This saw Tommy invest in an automatic feeding system, the Lely Vector.

This machine has its own shed designated to it on the farm and is like another employee on the farm, carrying out a vital job on what is already a high-output dairy system.

The Lely Vector is set up to the side of the main cubicle shed. In order to take feed from the pits, Tommy invested in a silage cutter which takes almost inch perfect cuts from each pit.

Once feed is taken from the pit it is left in the kitchen, with individual sections in the shed for different feeds.

For example, in Tommy’s kitchen he has a section for grass silage, maize silage and straw as well.

In Tommy’s case, the task of filling up the kitchen with feed takes 25-30 minutes, twice a week. The robot then does the rest and is on the go 24 hours a day, seven days a week and makes its rounds around the unit every 40 minutes.

Before getting a feed mix ready, the vector scans the shed to see what animals need feed and if there is any feed leftover from the last deposit, it pushes it in closer to the feedface for the cattle to finish it up.

The vector scanning the feed passageway and pushing in any leftover feed

Once it knows it has to get a mix ready it stations itself in the ready area where a feed grabber takes up the required amount of bulky feed – by moving side to side across the various feeds – from the kitchen and loads it into the robot.

In this ready area where the robot is being loaded, augers are connected here to add any concentrate feed or, minerals to the mix.

From then, the feed is mixed and ready to be fed out. The vector is able to move from its loading area around the shed where the cattle are using tracks which are basically metal strips that go where the farmer wants the robot to go.

Tracks which the vector moves along to feed cattle

With cows in milk, on the point of calving and also dry cows, the vector is able to make up different diets to meet the requirements Tommy and farm manager Eddie have set out for the cows.

When the robot is feeding out along the passageway it is able to recognise and adjust its positioning when depositing feed to avoid coming into contact with the cows or even a person or vehicle.

The vector feeding out a mix

Storage for 2,500t of silage

As well as expanding the accommodation on the farm, Tommy also looked at increasing his winter fodder storage.

Up until last year, two pits side by side were on the farm to hold winter fodder for the suckler cows.

However, as the farm has now moved to a predominately indoor system, more feed storage was required and as such, three more silage slabs, built side by side were constructed.

The farm has now capacity to hold 2,500t of across the five pits.

Existing handling and calving facilities

Tommy didn’t have to convert all of his existing sheds and facilites to make the move to dairy.

Right beside where the cubicle area and robots are is a fine handling setup based off Dr. Temple Grandin’s work on cattle handling facilities.

The handling area consists of a number of pens, a 360° circular forcing pen, a curved shute leading to the front of the crush, which is covered on both sides by stockboarding. The head of the crush was fitted with a cattlemaster iDRAFT system.

On the other side of the passageway from the handling facilities are six calving pens fitted with calving gates, slip through points between each pen and headlocking barriers.

On the opposite side of the wall to the calving pens are where the dry cows are housed on solid concrete floors that are bedded with peat.

There is also a calf shed on the farm, located just off the main shed where the cows in milk and dry cows are.

Further expansion

As mentioned, Tommy had to re-jig his once suckler shed to accommodate his Fleckvieh cows in order to have cubicles for them.

However, the plan is to recreate the cubicle shed he has now and to end up having 200 cubicles and space to house his youngstock.

Work is well underway on the extension of the cubicle shed

At the time of Agriland’s visit, work had already started on adding more cubicles, while the site where the slurry will be stored had begun, with the next task being to start pouring concrete.

The end goal between the existing shed and once the extension is complete to the new one (which will be a carbon copy of the exisitng shed) is to have all stock on the farm under the one roof and have slurry storage for nine months of the year.

Tommy said the plan is to have slurry storage for 1.1 million gallons of slurry when all the building work is completed.

By the time the building work is completed, Tommy believes the overall project will stand to him at €1.6 million.

The shed extension is set to be a carbon copy of the existing converted cubicle shed

Consistency and work-life balance

Tommy is a big believer in technology and in his move to dairy is aiming to be the most automated farm in the country.

The reason for this is not to just show this is the case, he strives for perfection in what he does and doesn’t do anything without ensuring he can justify doing it, that the end result will be one that is merited.

Two of the main points Tommy made when it came to placing such faith in technology on his farm was, in terms of the farm’s performance, was having consistency and optimizing what they are striving to achieve.

The second was ensuring a proper work-life balance where those working on the farm work 8:00a.m to 6:00p.m, Monday to Friday, and have only to come in at the weekend to check to see is everything okay.

Cow’s after being fed fresh feed

Tommy said: “I do everything by the book here, always did and I don’t leave no stone unturned in achieving that. I saw a farm that was making a loss of a period and told myself I had to change something.

“In the space of a year, the farm has turned on its head and is performing very strong financially which is being helped by a strong milk price currently.

“The team here are much more relaxed and happier since the change and I myself am over the moon with how it’s going so far.”

The office which looks down over the cows