This Christmas, Agriland is revisiting some of the most popular Dairy Focus articles from 2025, in a ‘Dairy Throwback‘ series.

In part two of the Dairy Throwback series, Agriland looks back at the farm of Conor Mulcahy in Nenagh, Co. Tipperary.

Conor is milking 80 cows on a 100ac milking platform in a farm partnership with his father Mike.

As well as milking the 80 cows and rearing 80 calves to yearlings, Conor also keeps on 120 breeding ewes.

And as if all that was not enough, he also manages his own construction business, Conor Mulcahy Construction.

Mulcahy said that none of it would be possible without the support of his wife, Jillian, and his four kids; David, Michael, Sean, and Katie.

Conor started out as a carpenter, then became a foreman, before starting his own company, all while having the ambition to return to the farm.

However, he said: "I knew the farm needed a ball of money and I wasn't going to go heavily borrowing."

Therefore everything he was making was going back into the farm so he could set it up for success in case anything went wrong with the construction side of things.

Expansion

Before Conor came home and went into a farm partnership with his father in 2017, the Mulchays were milking around 36-37 cows.

However, in 2018 that figure dropped dramatically to 15 cows after the herd tested positive for TB.

It took the farm two years to be fully rid of the disease before any expansion could start.

Now they are milking 80 British Friesian type cows, the farm has invested heavily in infrastructure, and the majority of the land has been reseeded.

Currently, Conor is happy with the amount of cows he is milking saying he does not 'intend to go much more', especially considering he milks at 6:00a.m to get out the gate at 7:15a.m for his construction job.

In 2023, with his own construction company Conor began building a new parlour and an adjoining cubicle house.

He fitted a 14-unit Dairymaster Swiftflo swing parlour, equipped with a diversion line, auto wash, and a variable speed milk pump.

He fitted heat guard clear sheeting on the roof of the parlour which allows for great light in the parlour and gives great comfort in terms of coolness in the shed during the summer months.

Mulcahy has his cubicle shed, crush, and drafting unit all interlinking with each other.

He considered installing robots, but decided he could not be as free from the yard as he is with a traditional herringbone.

He stated: "I was out at a few farms with robots and I found what they were saving in time with the robots they were spending trying to get cows milking that weren't cooperating."

He designed the system to try and make everything as simple as possible, so he could milk ion the morning and then head straight to work.

Herd production

The herd produces approximately 6,000L/cow with an average fat percentage of 4.42% and a protein percentage of 3.77%.

He keeps his average somatic cell count (SCC) below 120,000 cells/ml and his total bacteria count (TBC) below 6,000 cells/ml.

Conor synchronises his heifers and serves them with sexed semen, stating: "Our heifers and younger stock have the best genetics and we try to improve that every year."

He also picks out the best 15 cows based off milk recording economic breeding index (EBI) figures to breed to sexed semen.

Since coming back to the farm, Conor has moved more from Holsteins to British Friesians saying "there is a fair bit of minding in Holstein cows whereas [British Friesian] are hardy and get on with grazing that bit more."

Conor aims for an 18-22% of a replacement rate on the farm each year as he admitted that he has "an obsession" with improving figures and his Economic Breeding Index (EBI), non-sexed cows are bred to Angus and Hereford bulls.