Richard Hinchion

14 December 2001




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

AT the recent Irish Cattle Breeders Federation National Breeding Conference, the minister of Agriculture and Food officially launched a new cattle breeding database. This is a major milestone for the industry.

It has come about by milk recording and AI organisations, herdbooks and farmers pooling information into one large database. I have been participating in this initiative for the past two years on a pilot basis. So I was asked to speak on it at the conference from a farmers point of view.

This month will see 7000 farmers in milk recording herds receiving their Animal Event Pack. This new book will replace the need to fill in birth cards for national calf registration, birth cards for pedigree registration, cow enrolment forms for milk recording and calving survey forms for young test bulls.

We will now receive newer and better reports on our herd including milk recording, mastitis, calving, breeding and fertility.

Our farm was chosen by ICBF to shoot a video explaining the new Animal Events System, so our milking parlour and kitchen/office will be seen up and down the country this month in Teagasc offices.

Back to reality. We dried off the last 31 cows on Nov 30 and they will receive a lean diet of straw and silage for seven days.

We housed the in-calf heifers, some first calvers and 19 replacement calvers on Nov 17. This group are on ad lib silage and a 14% protein ration. Cows were out nearly full time before drying off, which was great.

Before housing, all animals were dosed and treated for lice and clipped along their backs to reduce sweating indoors. Cows will be divided according to condition score and calving date and fed accordingly.

An early Christmas present came our way when we received 12,000 litres of milk allocation due to foot-and-mouth and being unable to sell heifers in spring time. This will help our quota situation greatly.

Due to falling world market prices of skim and other products, we had to take a 0.35p/litre drop in price for October milk. So now the standard price is 19p/litre at 3.6% fat and 3.3% protein. We received a net price for October milk of 21.4p/litre. &#42


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