The specification for calculating dairy washing storage on farms is outdated, with new advice and tests being carried out to update farmers on what storage they will need.
This is what farmers were told at an event titled ‘Future proofing farmyards’ which took place last Friday (January 13) in Co. Tipperary, where up to 80 farmers gathered.
Teagasc specialist Patrick Gowing spoke about solving dairy-washing storage issues on farms and advised farmers on how to calculate what dairy washing storage they will need.
He said: “In my opinion, the simplest way to solve dairy-washing storage issues, and the best way, is to put a tank in the ground.
“We could go off and do this and that, but putting a tank in the ground is the best solution.
“The problem is at the moment that a slatted tank, say for a 14ft six-slat per linear foot, is working out at €400 excluding VAT.
“So basically if you want to build a 100ft tank, it’s going to cost €40,000, which is a ballpark figure.
“If we go back to 2015, that same size tank was working out at €180/ft, so it has more than doubled in price.”
Dairy washings
Gowing said that farmers should not leave themselves short on dairy washing storage, highlighting that the strong milk price at present is leaving farmers milking longer than usual.
“The next thing we have to look at with the dairy washings is every farmer in the country, rightly or wrongly, when they were out in a field with a slurry tank had dairy washings, but had no dairy washing tank in the yard,” he said.
“New rules state that nothing can be spread in the month of December, so no dairy washings to be spread in the current regulations.
“We have to have at least a month’s storage for dairy washings. However, the reality is if you build it for a month, what will happen?
“So you all have slurry storage on paper. If you build it exactly to the specification you will still probably not have enough storage.”
Gowing explained that the specification was based on a dairy farmer drying off on around December 15, and returning to milking again one month later on January 15.
“However, with the way milk prices are now, most farmers have been milking right up until Christmas so storage is and will be an issue,” he said.
Calculating storage
As Gowing alluded to, the old specification on dairy washings was based on an eight-unit milking parlourwhich was up to Rural Environment Protection Scheme (REPS) spec, which is 30L/cow/day.
He said: “The specification is outdated. So what we are advising is, in order to calculate the amount of dairy washing storage you need on your farm, to multiply your herd size by the volume of water [30L] for six weeks, which will give you that extra bit of scope.
“That’s above spec – you don’t have to go home and do that but that’s what we would advise.
“At the moment, tests are being carried out; flow meters are being put into tanks to check that 30L/cow/day figure to see if it’s accurate.
“Flow meters are gone into tanks from various different milking systems, be it conventional parlour, rotary and robotic milking systems to see if that figure is right.”
Gowing explained that there is currently not enough data, but once more data becomes available, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) will update those figures.
“If you know in your heart that you are using more water than what is on the spec, then the best thing to do is to put a flow meter in where the water is coming into the parlour,” he said.
“It can catch that and determine the figure, which is going to be 30L/cow/day or above that.”