Farm roadways have a significant role to play on dairy farms to ensure that maximum benefit is achieved from grazed grass.
Grazed grass is the key to the Irish dairy production model, and access to this grass via roadways is needed on farms.
To ensure the maximum benefit from roadways is obtained, farmers need to make careful considerations around not only their construction, but also their location.
Location
When building new farm roadways it is important to ensure that they are built in a location where they can be most useful.
Farmers need to ensure that they are being built somewhere that will allow them to have access to the maximum number of paddocks possible and ensure good cow flow.
Often a main central roadway, with other roadways running off this, works the best to ensure that all paddocks can be accessed. For some paddocks, there may even be access from multiple roadways.
Farm roadways
A major consideration when constructing a farm roadway is the number of cows that are going to be using it.
For a herd with 150 cows or fewer, a roadway width of 4.5m is adequate, with a additional 0.5m for every extra 100 cows advised.
In areas that will have a large amount of traffic such as around the parlour, farmers could consider having the roadways even wider to improve cow flow.
It is also important to remember that some machinery will be using the roadways so adequate width should be provided.
Controlling the flow of water from roadways is important; laying water will only cause damage to the roadway surface.
The slope of the roadway will depend on whether farmers choose to have a one-sided slope or two-sided slope:
- 1:20 one-sided slope;
- 1:15 two-sided slope.
It is also important to remember the changes in legislation to prevent direct run-off of soiled water from farm roadways.
If constructing a new roadway or making changes to an existing one, farmers should ensure that the roadway is not in breach of legislation.
Surface
Surface selection is also important. The surface has to provide some cushioning to cows’ feet while also being able to allow machinery to travel on it.
Having a good road surface for cows to walk on is a key control measure to reducing lameness issues on dairy farms.
It will not completely eliminate lameness, but it can reduce the number of cases considerably.
It is recommended to use 50-75mm of fine material on the surface of the roadway and to have it well compacted.
Once a new roadway has been constructed it is then important to maintain the quality of the surface.
Some farmers have started putting astroturf down to increase the cushioning for cows and extend the lift of the roadway.