In this week’s Dairy Focus, Agriland made the trip to meet Tomás and Cian Smyth, on their dairy farm in Co. Louth.
Tomás and his brothers, Aaron and Cian, are milking 180 cows in a split calving system, farming around 200ac just outside Castlebellingham, Co. Louth.
Earlier this year, the Smyths began selling their own milk from the farm and became the first farm in the Republic to sell milk off their farm through a vending machine.
History
Speaking to Tomás about some of the history of the Co. Louth farm, he said: ”My family were originally farming nearer to Dundalk, until the land was compulsory purchase order (CPO) in mid-60’s for housing.
”My father spent a bit of time looking for a farm and then bought the farm here in 1968.
”He farmed here from 1968, until the late 1980’s, while still living in Dundalk. He started building a house on the farm in the late 1980’s and we all moved here from Dundalk in 1992,” he added.
“There was a mixed farm operated here by my father, with about 30-40 cows milking and some beef animals as well. In the mid-1990’s, my father started keeping pedigree Charolais cattle as a bit of hobby.
”My father passed away in 2000, I was 14 at the time, my older brother Aaron was 18 and he took over the running of the farm.
”Soon after that we would of fazed out the beef and slowly increased dairy cow numbers,” he said.
Background
Commenting on his background, Tomás stated: ”I left school after completing my junior cert and did a trade as a carpenter.
”In 2007, I broke my leg playing football which meant I started spending more time at home.
”My brother Aaron was still here running the farm, Aaron had taken over the farm at 18 after my father’s death and by 2007-08, he wanted to go travelling,” Tomás continued.
”So in 2009, Aaron went travelling and I took over the running of farm, Aaron still works on the farm part-time.
“Cow numbers would of been slowly creeping up, but it was 2010 when we really took the big jump and increased numbers.
”Myself and my younger brother Cian, are now working on the farm full-time.”
Family operation
Agriland spoke to Tomás about the running of the farm and how the three brothers work together: ”Myself and Cian are working here full-time, with Aaron working here part-time,” he said.
“We start milking here at 6:00a.m in the morning and 3:30p.m in the afternoon.
”We start evening milking at 3:30p.m, which is properly a little bit earlier than most farms.
”It just means you are finished by 5:00p.m and you can do something in the evening, whether that be a bit of extra work or taking time off.
”I have a young family so I can spend time with them in the evening, or myself and Cian can meet up with some of our mates.
“It is important to not become tied to the farm, the farm has to work for you, not you working for the farm.
”It is great that there is two of us here, it means we can have time off and not have too worry about getting someone in to milk.”
System of production
Speaking about the system of production, Tomás said: ”Like most Irish dairy farms we are focused on producing milk from grass, we would have a very dry farm so we can get cows out grazing early and keep them out later.
“Grass is the cheapest feed, so maximising the amount of grass we can get into the cows diet reduces our costs.
”We are currently milking 180 cows, in a split calving system, with around 30 cows calving in autumn to fulfil our winter contract”
Breeding
Walking through the Smyth family’s herd, you can see a mix of Friesian and Jersey cross cows.
Commenting on the breeding policy of the herd, Tomás said: ”We bred a lot of our cows to Jersey genetics, but have now gone back to using high economic breeding index (EBI) Friesian genetics.
“The Jersey cross cows are great but Friesian genetics seems to have caught up and you do not have issues with selling bull calves.
”We used a little bit of Fleckvieh last year and this year again, they look like good calves and you have a good male beef animal to sell.
”Our breeding season has gone really well, we now have the bulls in with cows.
”A bit like most farms, we want to tighten up our calving spread, having more cows calving in a shorter period of time.”
Milk shack
In early 2021, the Smyth family started to sell milk from the farm under the Wholey cow brand, making the Co. Louth farm the first in the Republic to do so.
”I always had an interest in trying to sell our own milk – the base price of milk has not changed for a long number of years so selling our own milk directly to consumers seemed like a good idea,” Tomás said.
”In 2011, I started looking into selling milk from the farm but there was a lot of red tape; the farm was not really set up for selling milk either.
”We were all still playing football and cow numbers were increasing so we were all busy.
“Then in 2016, I went over to England to look at machines over there, I was very impressed by what I saw.
”It was not until October 2019, when we sourced the vending machine from Italy, all of the other equipment used comes from Irish companies.
”It took until now to get to a place where we can actually open the milk shack, it has gone really well so far.
”The first few weeks were mad, with it becoming a little bit quiet in the last few weeks, we are still selling 400L a day from the shack.”
Future of the Co. Louth farm
Looking to the future of the Co. Louth farm and milk shank, Tomás stated: ”We have spent the last number of years getting the farm to a place were we could operate the milk shack.
”We still have a few things to do, we would like to update our silage pits and a little bit of tidying in some parts of the yard.
”Unlike most farms, we would like to be milking less cows and producing less milk, but make the farm more profitable.
”I would like to sell more milk directly to consumers, if we could sell all our milk under are own brand and milk less cows that would be great.
“For any other farmers considering selling your own milk, I would definitely recommend it.
”We are achieving a far better price for your product, with more control over the price, average milk price on this farm for the last ten years was 32-33c/L, selling our own milk directly to consumers the margin is much better.”
