This Friday (January 15), AgriLand will host its first Instagram takeover, with the honour bestowed upon Co. Tipperary farmer Mark Collins – otherwise known as ‘MC Milking It’.
Collins will take over the AgriLand account to show us what a day in the life looks like on his dairy farm.
“I’m farming full-time at the moment alongside my parents, Padraig and Ena. I finished college last year, I studied Dairy Business in UCD [University College Dublin],” he said.
“Our young stock is contract reared, and we’ll be calving 430 cows this spring.
“We are mainly focused on trying to produce milk from grass and trying to farm the land in the most sustainable way, as we see it.”
“We’re in a very fortunate opportunity where our farm is at the moment to be trying to push towards making it more efficient and more sustainable,” he said.
“Last year, we started spreading all our nitrogen as protected urea and we started spreading all of our slurry through LESS [low emission slurry spreading].
Going down the line, we’re looking into multi-species swards and more clover and trying to improve our nitrogen and all that.
“We’re in a lucky position that we can focus on that stuff now – it’s about trying to stay ahead of the curve, if we can do that, and try and set an example, because it benefits everyone.
“The last year has been pretty good – we just started milking with a 60-bail rotary, so we have our own challenges with the change around and all that.
“We’re all spring calving, so we’re just waiting for things to kick off in the next week or two.”
Be sure to follow us on Instagram to see Collins in action tomorrow morning.