Tom Roche is milking 150 a mostly black and white herd of cows just outside of Castleisland in the scenic Co. Kerry.

Tom is still achieving some brilliant figures on the farm through hard work and dedication, despite claiming he has gone into 'autopilot' in the last few years.

He said he would not call his current situation semi-retirement, but admitted that he is heading in that direction with a partnership on the table from next year.

The herd is currently being milked once a day (OAD), producing 13L/cow at 5% fat and 4.43% protein.

Tom moved to OAD early this year after housing cows by night for two weeks in September when conditions turned.

The farm currently has a growth rate of about 30kg DM/ha, however, Tom is aware that this will fall significantly this week with the cold weather and saturation.

This will mean that whatever grass is there currently is all that will be available for the rest of the season.

Dairy setup

David O'Leary has been visiting Tom's farm from a young age.

He then leased a neighbouring block adjacent to Tom's farm, and the pair began an unofficial partnership.

Now they plan on setting up a a formal partnership, which will boost their herd number well above 200, making the sizable operation more resilient to future issues.

Further down the road, Tom's son Colm may come home to take Tom's place, sharing the management and workload with David.

Tom is currently farming approximately 150ac, with and additional 50ac of leased land off-farm, used for heifer rearing and silage, leaving him with a stocking rate of 2.5LU/ha.

The land ranges in quality, with a vein of limestone land running through the middle, and bog land to either side, which can help him through droughts.

The soil across the platform is in the middle range in terms of P and K, though Tom said some fields maybe too high in K for his liking because of how easy they are to spread slurry in after silage.

He currently has about 20 left grazing on the platform, so he is hoping to keep grass in the diet until mid-November if everything goes to plan.

He has not yet started to feed silage to the herd, stating that they would only be rejecting silage if good grass was still in front of them.

Tom is currently feeding 2kg of concentrates in the parlour, and his somatic cell count (SCC) is currently at 188, despite spiking above 200 after transitioning to OAD.

The Co. Kerry man has already started to dry off a few heifers over the last week, expecting the rest of the herd to be dry by early December.

He is milking in a 12 unit double-up Dairymaster parlour, which is equipped with cluster removers, a milk weighing system, automatic wash-out system, and more, which allows Tom to milk in around an hour and a half.

He said it is a very comfortable and compact system making it easy for one man to operate, he added that he would be under too much pressure on his own if he went any bigger.

Reseeding

Tom admitted to getting 'lax' with reseeding for a couple of years, but now follows a very strong system.

Over the last four years, he has being reseeding approximately 20ac of the farm each year in or around the month of April.

He said the practice is not putting him under pressure with grazing, and he is always ahead with silage, having at least one to two months of fodder left over in the yard after each spring.

Tom is using a red clover mix in the dairy platform, with 21ac planted last year, and said he is very happy with the success.

He noted that he is aware red clover typically only lasts for three years, but is having problems with the persistency of white clover.

Despite the inclusion of the clover, Tom has not yet moved to zero nitrogen, and stated that the fields are still getting around 20 units of nitrogen after grazings.

Breeding

Tom's breeding standards are top quality, with his hard work and dedication putting his herd in the top 10% of the EBI.

Tom said a lot of it feeds back to implementing technology into the system, saying his MooMonitor collars and drafting gate have made breeding far easier.

This has also allowed him transition into the use of 100% sexed semen in the breeding season just gone, as well as the synchronizing of heifers.

Tom managed to achieve a 60% conception rate this year from the straws, with David choosing the bulls to be used, with the heard now slowly transitioning towards a jersey cross herd.

Tom keeps a 20% replacement rate, stating that he had a 9% empty rate and that other cows with bad legs and high SCC were also culled.

On top of all of this, he had a 93% six-week calving interval in 2025, saying he is always at least 85%.

Tom once again credited this to the MooMonitor and drafting gate system he has had in place for the last decade, saying the combination puts him in a position to be comfortably on top of the breeding.

This is a big thing for Tom, especially in terms of removing labour, as it is usually just him and a student for some hours in the morning.