This Inside the 2026 Quality Milk Awards: Meet the Finalists series introduces the farms nominated by each of the co-operatives and their stories.

In this third episode of the series, we meet the Campions from Graigue, in Co. Tipperary, who were nominated by Centenary Thurles Co-op.

We also meet the Carrolls from Coolrus, in Co. Limerick, who were nominated by Dairygold, and took home the award for Grassland Management.

Campion Farm - Centenary Thurles Co-op

You know something before you are halfway up the lane at Graigue.

The yard is swept, the roadways run true to every corner of the grazing block, and the cows lift unhurried heads as you pass, the settled calm of a herd that is well handled and well housed.

What you would never guess is that, four short years ago, there was not a dairy cow in the place.

The Campion family are new entrants to dairying.

Until 2021 Paddy Campion ran a well-regarded beef enterprise here on the edge of the Devil’s Bit country; today he and his son Lorcan milk 155 cows on a simple, spring-calving, grass-based system.

It is very much a family enterprise. Paddy and Lorcan farm full time; Ann, Paddy’s wife, now retired, is back in the thick of it every spring for calving and calf care.

Sons Michael, John, and Podge lend a shoulder when they are needed.

Michael, a Teagasc adviser, brings a professional eye to the home place, while daughter Miriam completes a household as well known on the playing field as in the parlour.

Milk quality is where new entrants are most often caught out, and it is where the Campions have the most to be proud of.

Somatic cell count has been held consistently low, down into the fifties and sixties of thousands through the spring of 2026, while total bacterial count sits in single figures to the low teens, the mark of a spotless routine in a parlour barely four years old.

In 2025, the herd delivered almost 82,000kg of milk solids, an average of 525kg per cow, figures that speak of grass well grown and cows well fed.

Out in the fields, protected urea, clover in every reseed, soil pH held at 6.6-6.8 and a nitrogen-use-efficiency figure of 36% and rising all reflect a farm run with the low-carbon principles of the Teagasc Signpost Programme in mind.

Some 900m of new hedging has gone in over the past decade, the two watercourses on the farm are fenced well back and mapped for vulnerability, and a walk of the ground with the Merlin app has logged around 20 bird species, migratory visitors among them.

For all the technology, the goal is refreshingly human: a 40-hour working week, a 6.30a.m start and a 4.30p.m finish, and time left over for the hurling and the camogie that mean so much to this family.

In just four years, the Campions have built what many farmers spend a lifetime chasing, a high-quality, sustainable and genuinely happy family farm.

Carroll Farm - Dairygold

Winner - Grassland Management

On the wall of the milking parlour at Coolruss hangs a milk-recording sheet dated 1931, a year the Carrolls sent milk from a Shorthorn herd down the road to the creamery at Granagh.

Ninety-five years later, the same family is still writing down what each cow gives, still chasing the next small improvement, and that sheet on the wall tells you most of what you need to know before a single cow is milked.

Michael Carroll farms here in partnership with his father Martin and mother Mary, the fifth generation on the holding; with his wife Stephanie and their three young children, Donagh, JJ and Eliza, about the place, three generations work the yard between them.

It is a calm holding, run by a calm man, and the ease between father and son is the first thing a visitor notices.

Michael came to farming by a roundabout road.

A qualified quantity surveyor, he spent nine years in construction and an autumn in New Zealand before the pull of home won out.

Michael said: “It’s great to be your own boss, but you have to love farming and I do.”

His father Martin grew up here and still minds the dry stock and does the lighter tractor work; Michael’s mother Mary takes care of the calves through the spring; and between them the generations share the load so easily that no one seems to be in charge and everything still gets done.

The children are never far from the action and, although young, they help out where they can and love the farm.

Milk recording

That 1931 instinct to measure is now the farm’s sharpest tool.

The herd is milk-recorded four times a year with Munster Bovine, and Michael treats the figures as the farm’s eyes.

“The information from milk recording is fantastic,” he said, using it to find the one cow lifting a cell count long before she shows up as a clot in the filter.

The detailed picture provided by milk recording is also central to Michael’s breeding strategy, allowing him to base breeding decisions on each cow’s proven performance.

The 20-unit GEA parlour has automatic cluster removers, an automatic wash and a water softener to improve cleaning efficiency.

Nedap GEA cow collars feed an automatic drafting system.

The reward for consistent attention to detail shows up in the tank, the herd delivered 518kg of milk solids per cow in 2025 off 814kg of meal.

Michael’s stated ambition, “five and four”, 5% fat and 4% protein, is really the Shorthorn-to-Friesan improvement of the last century carried one step further.

Ask Michael the secret and he does not mention cows.

“Make yourself have an interest in grass,” he says,  and he does, eyeballing covers into PastureBase more than 30 times a year.

The Carrolls use spring and autumn rotation planning and reseed about 10% of the farm annually.

Clover is established across approximately 30% of the grazing platform. Multi species was tried but the chicory and plantain did not last.  

All the nitrogen is protected urea, slurry goes out through a dribble bar, and every drop of grey water is collected and spread from March to October.

Lime does the quiet heavy lifting,  41t of it in 2025, “a great return on the investment” and the farm’s carbon footprint sits at 0.83kg of CO₂ equivalent per kilo of milk, low by any measure and lower each year by design rather than accident.

Efficiency strategy

Cows recorded 300 days at grass, a considerable achievement on a wet farm.

The approach is methodical: correct the soil, retain the nutrients and ask the sward to do more of the work.

The target is not simply more cows, but more useful output from the cows already present.

Michael's stated destination is “five and four”, milk at 5% fat and 4% protein, alongside tighter calving, stronger grass utilisation and concentrate held close to its present level.

It is an efficiency strategy expressed in the language of milk solids rather than expansion.

The breeding policy is equally specific. The cows have an EBI of 153 and replacements already up at 189.

Michael genotyped the entire herd some years ago and now breeds straight off the data.

Daughter-proven bulls are selected with emphasis placed on fat and protein rather than milk volume alone; a sire is rejected if his dam has not performed above the herd average.

He also uses genomically tested bulls, In 2025, 90% of the animals selected for dairy breeding received sexed semen, with Jersey used sparingly on larger cows. Easy calving beef sires are used on the balance.

There is a fifth of Jersey blood in the herd for solids and a handful of Norwegian Reds for hardiness.

Watching a big-framed cow amble past, Martin offers the old verdict that still holds: “The Holstein was the vet’s best friend, but the Shorthorns were never sick."

In the middle of all the genomics, it is a reminder of what the family has always bred for.

Dairy stock knowledge also runs through the wider family: Michael's brother Pat is a dairy livestock specialist with Grasstec.

The aim is a fertile, productive cow suited to the farm rather than an animal bred for a single headline figure.

Michael's target for milk composition sits within that wider design: higher solids must come with health, fertility and the ability to perform efficiently from grass.

Good farms are not farms without problems; they are farms that learn quickly when problems arise.

Summer scour was the principal herd-health challenge in 2025.

The response for 2026 was practical and specific: access to hay, more controlled grazing on older pastures, avoiding turnout before calves are ready and greater care around weaning.

Newborn calves receive colostrum immediately under the '1-2-3' system, calf mortality is reported below 5%, and herd health is supported through vaccination, faecal testing and participation in the Munster Bovine programme bulk tank herd health screening scheme.

Selective dry-cow therapy is increasingly being used with the intention of growing that proportion as confidence and evidence allow.

The current threshold is never having a SCC above 80,000.

It is a sensible feature of the Carroll approach: progress is welcomed, but only when the management underneath it is strong enough to carry it.

Labour management

One of the farm's most modern feature may be the way labour is treated.

Ollie O'Brien, a neighbour, has worked full-time with the Carrolls since 2019, milking and carrying out tractor work.

Outside the busiest spring period he works a five-day week, receives eight weeks of annual leave and has December off.

Clodagh Hartigan, a Leaving Certificate student who is hoping to study veterinary, undertakes some of the relief milking.

Contractors handle silage and reseeding, with relief milkers used when required.

Michael aims to finish by 6:00pm, leave only essential work for weekends and take a two-week family holiday in summer.

Stephanie himself and the kids were heading to Centreparks a few days after the judges' visit.

With 201 cubicles for cows and heifers, ample slurry storage and strong infrastructure, capacity is kept ahead of pressure.

Organisation allows the farm to perform without making permanent demands on everyone around it.

Free time is put to good use.

Michael coaches under-8 and under-10 teams with Granagh-Ballingarry GAA, serves on the club's finance committee and the local parents' association, and represents the Grange region on a Dairygold regional committee.

Through the Farmer Time programme, he also brings the farm into Dublin classrooms by live video, explaining agriculture and answering children's questions.

Environmental care follows the same pattern of steady accumulation.

Watercourses, drains and ditches are fenced; roadways are cambered; water is recycled in the milking process; and farm plastics and cardboard are recycled.

The family plants about 15 trees and 100 whitethorn plants each year, retains established trees and provides bird and owl boxes.

Solar panels are the planned next step.

Together, these measures reveal a farm that understands improvement as repetition: test the soil again, measure the grass again, plant the next hedge and review the next milk record.

The 1931 sheet shows that attention to detail is not a recent practice on this farm, it is an inheritance Martin and Michael are actively renewing.

Coolruss is strong by every technical measure, but its deeper achievement is the balance between continuity and change.

Martin's experience remains useful, Michael's ambition remains open to evidence, and Ollie makes the system stronger.

The records on the wall look back across ninety-five years. The farm they guide is facing firmly forward.

More information on all the finalists is available on the Quality Milk Award YouTube page.

The Inside the 2026 Quality Milk Awards: Meet the Finalists series is a collaboration between Agriland, the National Dairy Council and Ornua.