Henry and Enda Walsh are farming in partnership in Oranmore, Co. Galway where their “efficient” Jersey- Friesian-cross, high fertility herd are driving production.

The family hosted a farm tour visit as part of the British Society of Animal Science (BSAS) conference, where agricultural researchers from all over the world got first-hand experience of an efficient, grass-based, spring calving dairy system.

The father and son partnership has been a great success ever since Enda returned home upon completion of Dairy Business in University College Dublin (UCD) over 10 years ago.

The whole farm consists of 20ha with the milking platform consisting of 95ha, which means the milking platform is now stocked at 2.9 cows/ha.

The farm consists of an out-block for rearing calves and heifers and also for making quality grass silage.

The big driver of profitability on the farm is grass grown and grass utilised.

They have been growing on average 12t of grass/ha in the last few years and, as the soil is a limestone, free draining soil, they can get quite dry in the summer months and are limited by reduced nitrogen usage in their efforts to establish clover in the sward.

Dairy focus

The Walshs decided to put up a 50 point rotary parlour in 2018, with completion of the project in February 2019. They are delighted with their decision as they have 300 cows milked in an hour.

Calving starts at the beginning of February and 50% of the herd were calved down by February 15 this year, which highlights the herd’s excellent fertility.

The cows are straight out to grass as they calve down, as the farmers aim to have the herd at grass for 300 days of the year. They are of the strong opinion that maximising days in milk coupled with days at grass drives solids production on the farm.

The cows produced 5,500kg/cow of milk last year with just under 500kg of solids/cow with an impressive 4.87% fat and 3.85% protein.

Milking starts at 06:00a.m and 03:00p.m every day

With these impressive components, the farmers’ average milk price for the year was in the top 1% of the country, with their annual somatic cell count (SCC) at 92,000 cells/ml.

These solids are driven through the fertility of the herd and getting grass into the diet – even after the harsh spring last year and poor grass growing year, they still only fed 700kg of concentrates/cow.

Fertility

100 of the best performers in the herd, based on milk recording data and genomic evaluations, will be selected for breeding the replacements on the farm, with the Walshs aiming for a 20% replacement rate each year.

These top performers in the herd will be given a sexed semen straw within the first three weeks of the breeding season, with the lower genetic merit animals getting a dairy-beef straw.

The Censortech collars on the farm are proving an essential investment, as they are able to pinpoint their timing of sexed semen artificial insemination (AI). As Henry said: “They will be inseminated up to 16 hours after the end of standing heat .”

Enda does all the AI on the farm himself – they carry out nine weeks of AI with no stock bulls stepping foot on the farm.

The conception rate on the farm last year with conventional semen was 70% and 65%with sexed semen. The farm had an empty rate of just 5%, underpinning the success of their breeding policy and overall farm efficiency.

The herd’s calving interval was 367 days last year, and the spring six week calving rate was 95%, with all of the replacement heifers calving

The beef straws used on lower genetic merit cows is a mixture of Aberdeen Angus, Limousin, Charolais, and Belgian Blue.

Henry said: “it’s about getting the balance right” between calving difficulty and quality beef traits.

The calving difficulty is set at around 4-5% and the Walshes work around that to then choose traits like carcass weight, carcass conformation. and feed intake. But like any dairy farmer, they “don’t want any excessively difficult calving”.

The herd has an average economic breeding index (EBI) of €243 and the average weight of the herd is 550kg, which the Walshes mentioned is their target weight for their herd.

Any cow with a bit more size to her is given a sexed Jersey straw in an effort to reduce the size, as they feel that this type of cow is the most efficient at converting grass into solids with lower maintenance or expense.

A few of the bulls selected this year are as follows:

Rosybower Shambo SRM (FR9841), EBI of €316 with fertility of €132 and 0.45% fat and 0.31% protein;
Cherryhill Trooper (FR9819), EBI of €355, fertility of €151 and 0.34% fat and 0.21% protein;
Candrew Freddie 2040 SRM (FR9801), EBI of €341, fertility of €150, 0.34% fat and 0.21% protein;
Glen Kaycee Sherlock JG (JE1368), EBI of €258, fertility of €76 and 0.56% fat and 0.29% protein;
Ellison Integrity Kaka (JE9217), EBI of €290, fertility of €84 and 0.53% fat and 0.28% protein.

Unfortunately, the Walsh’s farm went down with bovine tuberculosis (TB) recently having been free of TB for over 40 years, in which 105 cows recorded positive for the disease.

This means they are currently locked up and rearing every calf that dropped this year, increasing the workload massively.

Enda told Agriland :”For the first time, we are looking at TB resistant bulls this year and really focusing on the health traits.”

The cows out at grass after evening milking

He also mentioned that the key to having good health and fertility in the herd and maintaining production is to be proactive on culling decisions, as the average lactation in the herd is currently 3.3.

This is low due to the TB, as it usually sits at around four which is more desirable because a mature herd produces higher milk solids.

The extra work is well managed on the farm – for the last 30 years, Henry has been taking on students to work on the farm.

Henry said: “Each and every one of them has their own strengths and it’s just about encouraging them and finding what they are good at.”

He mentioned that he enjoys taking on students as he knows how to manage them, how to find their strengths and weaknesses. He likes to engage with them and is constantly teaching them.

Henry also mentioned that the students come inside and have the breakfast and dinner with the family and everything that goes on outside is discussed, along with politics, sports and gossip.

Grass efficiency

As mentioned, a big driver of the profitiability on the farm is the type of cow and her ability to put her head down and graze and convert that grass to milk solids with very little additional supplementation.

The Walshes aim for a silage reserve of 2 milking bales of silage/cow, which for 300 cows add up to 600 bales for the grazing season.

The aim is to cut quality grass silage with a dry matter digestibility (DMD) of over 70%, which Henry mentioned is kept in front of cows all throughout the winter months, 24 hours a day so that the cows maintain condition and recover before calving.

The Walshes aim to reseed 12% of the farm every year, which in an eight-year cycle means that every field is done once, as they want every paddock growing up to 14t/ha with clover incorporation.

Due to the poor clover growth last year and its inability to persist in swards, 18% of the milking platform is incorporated with 20% clover in swards.

However, after this year, that figure should be up at 28% of the milking platform in clover.

A three-year-old reseed on the farm with 20% clover incorporation

In terms of slurry storage on the farm, the Walshes are very comfortable as they have a lagoon that holds up to 500,000L along with a number of underground slatted tanks. The thicker slurry is always targeted on the silage ground.

Watery slurry and soiled water is targeted on the milking platform with soiled water primarily going out on clover paddocks, to make up potassium (K) and phosphorus (P) indexes with a little nitrogen (N).

The silage ground is due to receive protected urea with sulphur (S) of 38-0-0 + 7% S and admitted that they had minor issues with protected urea in recent years.

Due to the comfortable slurry capacity, it allows them to get out slurry on favourable conditions, when nitrate leaching will not be an issue and the soil can fully uptake the N.

The average soil pH on the farm is around 7 and they still get out a bit of lime each year when reseeding. According to Henry, the soil has “exceptionally good carbon”, which he felt was because of their high stocking rate in recent years.

They collect 50 soil samples every year, which Henry said is a small investment for the return, as it costs around €1,250 each year but allows for targeted fertiliser use and optimum usage of valuable nutrients.

The farm has an allowance for P, as they were able to purchase 30t of 18-6-12 this year but Henry warned that if this was not targeted properly off soil samples, a lot of it could be wasted.

Overall, the aim for the Walshes is to breed a robust, efficient cow with little health and lameness issues that converts grass to milk solids all while growing grass sustainably and in a targeted fashion.

Currently, their carbon footprint of milk production, measured in kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents per kilogram of milk (kg CO₂ eq/kg milk), is around 0.79kg CO₂ eq/kg milk, substantially below the Irish average of 1kg CO₂ eq/kg milk.

Dairy focus

Fertility

Grass efficiency

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Jersey cross

Dairy Focus: Fertility & grass efficiency driving solids in Galway