Denis Cody is milking 500 cows on two milking platforms with his wife Carmel and his parents Eamon and Anne near Clonmore, Templemore, Co. Tipperary.
The Cody’s farm was the centre of attention at a farm open day showcasing New Zealand agricultural technology solutions last week, where his farm system and recent investment had attendees in awe.
The farm consists of two milking platforms – a 90ha home platform with 300 Jersey cross Friesian cows and a 63ha leased unit, milking an additional 200 cows.
The business recently installed a new Waikato Milking System and a 54-bale Orbit rotary platform on the home block, which has helped Cody drastically improve his farm efficiency and working hours.
The whole farm now consists of 250ha, where 100ha of it is owned and 150ha of it is leased and is spread across five different blocks.
Milking 500 cows
Cody graduated from Kildalton College in 2010 and got a new entrant quota in 2012, where he was milking 130 cows with his father Eamon and his mother Anne.
The second milking platform started in 2013 and is around 9km away from the home farm, where there was shell of a 14-unit parlour, which has since been revamped and is getting full use.
The second milking platform tied in well, with Cody coming back to milk as with the new entrant quota, he was able to send out 200,000L, which saw them milking 110 cows on the home farm and 40 cows on the new leased land.
Since then, the Codys were always eager to grow their herd even more.
Cody told Agriland that “we never bought an animal, all expansion was from our own breeding, but if you told me a couple of years ago I’d be milking 500 cows, I would’ve laughed”.
“So traditionally, it would have been a Holstein cow here but in 2010, we decided to go Jersey across the board. So, we done as much jersey breeding as we could with the cow type at the time to get that first cross jersey,” he added.
Cody operates a spring calving, but the late calving cows and empty cows milk on over the winter months as “October and November, we were getting €450, so we decided to keep them for the winter to put a bit of flesh on them at the same time”.
Cody consistently achieves a 90% six-week calving rate, with the first cows to calve on February 1, where he tries to get them out at grass as soon as possible if the weather permits.
Breeding
The breeding season starts the last week of April and runs for about nine to 10 weeks, where Cody uses artificial insemination (AI) for about six weeks and uses stock bulls to mop up for about three weeks.
Around 200 cows and 130 heifers are synchronised on two separate days and given sexed semen when they come into heat.
A team of bulls then runs with the herd and the heifers for roughly 18 days after, which picks up any repeats. After that, beef semen is used on the cows that weren’t AI’d or picked up by the bulls.
Cody told Agriland that “it does work very well, because the heifers are on outside blocks and the two herds are on different farms, so doing it this way is just the handiest”.
When it comes to the breeding criteria for his herd, Cody said that “fertility is number one” as he mentioned since 2010, they have been crossing the Holstein, “so we’ve always had milk.”
The plan is to have 80 to 100 replacement heifers. Cody is up near 150 replacements this year, but he told Agriland that 150 is not sustainable for the future, as it puts him under unnecessary pressure in terms of derogation and nitrates.
“We’re sitting at 220kg N/ha and we’ve kept a few empty cows, about 20 of them, and I just looked at the figures about two weeks ago and I have to have 20 cows gone by October to stay under the 220kg N/ha,” Cody explained.
Performance
Cody is consistently feeding about 750 to 800kg of meal/cow every year with an aim of 500kg/cow/year, as he tries to to pump the cows’ production through grass.
The farm has been consistently growing about 14t grass over the las few years, with Cody achieving an 85% utilisation rate.
The cows have steadily being achieving 500kg/milk solids (MS)/cow, with roughly 3.80% protein 4.74% fats.
The cows peaked at 25 or 26L this year, but what Cody has found, is that his cows hold very well, as they are still producing roughly 20L/day at the moment while producing just 2kg/MS/cow/day.
New parlour conversion
The old parlour had two generations of Codys working in it, and Cody felt that he had outgrown it in terms of space and the whole area for cows.
“We were just bottled up too much”, he said.
Cody looked at a herring bone as an option, which was 75% of the cost, but he said it was still going to be a two-man job and that’s when he decided to opt for the rotary.
Cody went from each milking taking three hours to “whereas now, the cows are in and out in an hour”, as he mentioned that it has a great saving on labour, but he said that “the main driver was animal health”.
Cows were standing in the yard for hours every day, and Cody was finding the last few cows lying down by the time he got to the end of milking.
Cody has three full-time staff and one full-time milker leaving himself with more or less a spare man in the yard, a fully trained man ready to go and he feels “it’s just safer that way”.
Cody is happy to continue milking 500 cows at the moment, but he said he is always up for the next opportunity and that “you never know what might happen”.
Talking about the future of the dairy industry, Cody told Agriland that “dairy farmers will adapt and overcome, we will always find a way to stay moving forward. As long as the the dairy industry stays going the way it is, I’m staying enjoying it”.
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