In April 2021, Agriland made the trip to meet Robert Tobin on his Wicklow dairy farm to see how the farm developed from eight ewes and five bull calves, to 120 crossbred dairy cows.
Robert farms in Arklow alongside his father Paul and mother Elaine in a registered farm partnership.
The family farm comprises a total of 145ac, with 120 crossbred cows currently being milked; keeping 50 replacement units.
Background to Wicklow dairy farm
Speaking to Robert about his background and some of the history of the farm, he said: ”I am not from a farming background; in 2011 my mother inherited the farm from her father.
”At the time, my father was working as a mechanic and my mother was working as a teacher. I was still in school and had no idea what I wanted to do.
”The farm had a total of 50ac, with most of it being rough grazing and only about 20ac being in grass and farmable.
”The only building was a two-bay, old hay shed and a dung stead, but my parents decided to give the farming a go and invested their own money into the farm.
”There was no entitlement with the farm, so the farm had no income. They started with eight ewes and five Friesian bull calves my dad got as a payment for some work he did on a tractor.
”I started to get an interest in farming so I planned on going to UCD (University College Dublin), but I did not get the points and instead went to WIT (Waterford Institute of Technology) and did a degree in agriculture there.
”I found it great, very practical and probably suited me better than going to UCD would have done.
”By 2017, my parents were lambing 100 ewes and fattening 60 Friesian bulls a year. Also in 2017, the Harden family offered my father a block of land beside us.
”At the time he was not sure what my plans were but he took on the farm and said he would do something with it.”
Getting started
Reflecting on how he started in dairy farming and discovered his love for cows, Robert said: ”I had never milked a cow before, but I got a job milking cows on a local farm belonging to the Donnelly family on the weekends.
”When I asked for the job milking cows at the weekend, it was more for the money. I had no way of paying for my nights out in Waterford.
”I ended up loving it and caught the bug for milking cows as part of my placement in college. I went to New Zealand for six months and worked on a 1,500-cow farm.
”I had to come back home and finish my final year of college; if I did not have to do that I would still be over there. I would recommend anyone that has an interest in cows, or thinking of getting into cows, to go over there.
”When I finished college I returned home to farm alongside my father. We ended up contract rearing heifers on that block of land he had rented.
”The contract rearing was our first step into dairying on this farm.”
Converting to dairy
On converting the farm to dairy, Robert said: ”We made the decision that we were going to give dairying a go. We started building in 2018 with a very tight budget and the plan was to borrow as little money as possible.
”The entire farm needed to be fenced, roadways needed to go in and we had to install a water system. Most of the farm need to be reseeded as well.
”For designing the shed we got Grasstec in and they gave us four layouts that suited the yard. We wanted to use the existing sheds to keep costs down. We did not pick the best options Grasstec gave us; we picked the one that suited us best, and the budget.
”The old sheds were converted to cubicles, with a straw area at the top for calving and the milking parlour at the bottom.
”Dad is very good with metal work, so we were able to do a lot of the work ourselves with the help of a local builder.
”For the milking parlour I knew exactly what I wanted – we had a budget of €2,000 per unit – a 12-unit basic parlour with no bells and whistles.
”Salesmen would try and add bits or sell me a 16-unit, thinking I would not know what I was talking about because we were new entrants; they got a bit of a shock when they realised I did.
”I met with a number of manufactures, [but then] I met with Shane Doran from Pearson milking systems.
”Shane was able to give me the parlour we wanted, with a few small changes, for the price we wanted.
”In 2018 we bought 70 in-calf crossbred heifers all from one farm in Cork and calved them down in spring 2019.”
Production
”When we started, the plan was a 500kg live weight cow doing 500kg of milk solids (ms) from 500kg of meal.
”In 2018 we milked 70 heifers – it was a good and a bad idea. You’re not buying in other people’s problems, but their production is poor. In their first year they produced 380kg/ms from 700kg of meal. We still had a fair bit of reseeding to do so grass quality was quite poor.
”The second year we milked 105 cows and we did 430kg/ms from 600kg of meal. This year the aim is to achieve 480kg/ms from 600kg of meal from 120 cows.
”The soil type here is extremely heavy. Although we are in the south east, we are on a small vein of heavy soil; grazing at the shoulders of the year is challenging and because of this we are going to feed that extra 100kg of meal.
”We are usually grazing full time from March onwards. Last year we grew 16t of grass from 200kg/N spread; the heavier soil holds onto the moisture which means it is great for growing grass in the summer.
”We currently are achieving a 94% six-week in-calf rate, with the plan to continue with that high level of fertility,” Robert continued.
”The herd current average economic breeding index (EBI) is €170 for the milking cows with the youngstock averaging €210.
”We only use LIC daughter-proven bulls. The risk with genomic bulls is their EBI dropping, so I prefer to use daughter-proven. We operate six weeks of dairy AI, after that we do six weeks of beef AI and hire in stock bulls.
”Using daughter-proven over genomic means we can use a smaller team of bulls; we use a team of four bulls to get our replacements.
”A big thing for us is we want easy-calving bulls. We have strict time limits on how long a cow gets before we step in. We only have two cows left to calf and have not used the jack yet this year.”
Three-year plan for the Wicklow dairy farm
Looking to the future of this Wicklow dairy farm, Robert said: ”The plan for the next three years is to stick to the number we are at. We want to improve cow production and improve our grassland management.
”We want to become better at what we are doing before we would consider increasing cow numbers. The farm is not 100% there just yet, we still have some roadways and fencing to complete and a small bit of reseeding.
”Our long-term plan is up in the air. We supply Glanbia and with the restrictions they have announced, we’re not sure what will happen.
”The good news is the objection has been overturned, but I think what happened shows very poor planning from Glanbia, which is a concern.”
Advice
Ten years ago the Tobin family were not farmers and had no plans to start farming, but within that 10 years they have gone from sheep and beef farmers to milking 120 cows.
Robert had some advice for anyone who is interesting in dairying or thinking about starting: ”I recently set up an Instagram page for the farm and posted a ‘before and after’ photo of the yard and land.
”I got a lot of messages from people with small blocks of land like we had asking about how we got into cows and should they? My advice is, you need to be careful, but it can absolutely be done. We have made massive changes to the farm in 10 years.
”We started with nothing and are now milking 120 cows, but making sacrifices is a big thing. You have to know what you want firstly, set your goals higher than you are comfortable with.
”I think you need to talk to farmers and get advice from people and set up a business plan. Having someone on the end of the phone to ask questions of is a big thing.
”Finally, we were willing to not take a wage from the farm for the first few years; up until last year I was doing some work with a local contractor to have some money for myself.
”My father was working for nothing for the last three years, but this year we will hopefully both be taking a wage from the farm.”