Richard Hinchion
Richard Hinchion
Richard Hinchion milks 60
dairy cows and rears 40
replacements on 34ha (83
acres) at Crookstown, west
of Cork city, in southern
Ireland. With a fixed quota
of just over 300,000 litres,
the emphasis is on low-cost
production. Cows yield
6000 litres from 650kg of
concentrate
AS WE approach mid-August, I am glad to report we suffered no drought in the July/August period, unlike last year.
The weather has been mixed sunshine, showers and cool winds by night. Overall these conditions have favoured good grass growth on the farm.
Next week we will be going on our family holidays and boy, am I looking forward to getting away from cows, calves and grass. We are going to Trabolgan Holiday Village in East Cork – 50 miles away. This place has lots of facilities for kids such as bowling, playgrounds, waves, swimming pool and quads.
Back to farming, we managed to cut our 10ha (25 acres) of second cut silage on Jul 22. Sugars were marginal at 2.5%, but we used no additive. We immediately spread 32-40kg/ha (40-50 units/acre) of nitrogen for aftermaths which should be grazed in late August. No slurry was spread as tanks are empty, following first cut.
We are building a wedge of grass for autumn by extending the rotation to 30 days. We topped some stemmy grazed paddocks and dressed them with 24kg N/ha (30 units N/acre).
With our extra rented ground this year, we seized the opportunity to reseed a 3ha (7.5 acre) silage paddock which is cut twice yearly.
This was ploughed shortly after the silage crop was removed and levelled 4-5 times using a heavy roller. Lime and fertiliser was applied and grass sown on Aug 3 with a one pass system. With good growing conditions we should manage a light grazing with youngstock in October.
Cows are still yielding 23 litres each a day. We have reduced feed to 1kg/head/day of citrus pulp due to surplus grass. However, protein remains stuck at 3.28%; hopefully this will drastically improve.
We sold 10 of our late calves ex-farm in July so we now have to winter 49 calves. Four cull cows were sold to the special purchase scheme. This new scheme also involves grading cows for conformation and fat for payment purposes. Overall they averaged UK£340/cow. Gone are the days when you could get UK£1.60/kg for cull cows. *