Irish dairy expert John McCabe spoke to a room full of dairy farmers and service providers at Ellinbank SmartFarm in Gippsland in July.
His role at Teagasc, the Irish agriculture department, is to guide Irish dairy farmers in 20 discussion groups. He was in Australia as a guest of Dairy Australia.
The difference between Australian and Irish dairy farmers could not be more marked, listening to John’s presentation.
There are 15,500 dairy farms in Ireland, milking 1.5 million cows. That has grown from 1.1 million cows, five years ago, after trade changes with Europe in 2015.
In Ireland, the average farm size is 55 hectares, milking an average 93 cows per farm.
In recent years, the number of dairy farms has reduced — from 16,146 in 2020.
According to John, attrition is mostly in the form of changing to another commodity — particularly beef and horses.
At the same time, some dairy farms have increased their platform size.
Most dairy farmers buy in the fodder they need to feed out throughout the year, as well as grain.
In the dairy region that John services, the average farm size is 33.4 hectares, the average herd size is 80 cows, and the average cow is a 480kg Holstein Friesian.
“There’s money to be made in running a dairy farm of 100 cows in Ireland,” John said.
Herds are dried off over winter and barn-housed to meet pasture dormancy. Calving occurs from early spring.
The typical milk production curve climbs during summer during peak pasture growth.
The grazing rotation is based on 1.5 days grazing before herd movement.
In contrast, in Australia, 4163 dairy farms support an average-sized dairy herd of 305 cows. From 2019 to 2023, the number of dairy farms in Australia has reduced from 5213 to 4163.
The majority of dairy farms grow a considerable portion of their harvested fodder requirements; on some dairy farms in Australia, no fodder is brought in.
Calving can be seasonal or split. In a small proportion of the industry, calving is almost year round.
The majority of the Australian dairy herd grazes fresh pasture outside year round. During lactation, that often leads to a fresh paddock after each milking.
The difference between the two industries that was barely mentioned is the subsidies paid to Irish dairy farmers.
According to Teagasc data, in 2021, the basic public income support payment — paid based on per hectare of land used for farming — accounted for 80 per cent of payments to Ireland’s dairy farms.
There are also grants and subsidies available to modernise the Irish farm and make it more sustainable — similar to Australia.
One of the issues Irish dairy farmers are taking on board is using genetics to improve their breeding for selected values. One of the first values was fertility.
“In recent years, we’ve had a great uptake of breeding values,” John said.
He said the industry started testing Irish-bred bulls in 2005, and in 2008 leading dairy farmers started testing their heifers.
In 2009, the leading 10 per cent of farmers introduced genetic testing at the farm level.
That has now led to a government-introduced program of data recording, that includes genetic evaluation of markers including fertility, milk production and calving data.
“Sexed dairy semen has been used on an upward curve since 2019, and that’s accelerated since 2021,” John said.
“As the use of conventional dairy semen has reduced since 2021, the use of beef semen has accelerated in similar proportion.”
That has seen the development and growth of the Dairy Beef Index value in Ireland in recent years. It enables the selection of beef bulls that throw calves that mature earlier.
“As a result, we’ve seen better beef calves coming off the dairy farms,” John said.
Carbon emissions is a developing issue on Irish dairy farms, and cow health and productivity indexes are expected to be part of the accounting equation — cow fertility, lactation length, maturity and health of the cow.
At the same time, farmers are growing more clover in pasture to reduce reliance on synthetic fertilisers, to reduce nitrogen use on the farm.
Nitrogen as synthetic fertiliser is applied in granular form 99 per cent of the time, and one per cent of the time as foliar spray.
John said increased reliance of clover on farms had its own issues — increased risk of bloat being one of them.
In the previous year, rainfall doubled, and this resulted in slow pasture growth and slow fixing of nitrogen in pastures.
In comparison, more recently, periods of soil moisture deficits also saw a reduction in the amount of grass grown.
“The main driver of profit on Ireland’s dairy farms is the amount of grass eaten,” John said.
“This remained the same even as more grain was fed in 2022.
“When the fertiliser cost was much higher, the economics showed the main profit driver was still the amount of grass eaten per hectare.”
A challenge for the Irish dairy industry going forward is to improve nitrogen use efficiency in an environment that relies on grazing spring and summer pasture, and imported silage for autumn and winter feeding.
John said this required changes in dairy farming practices — including changing when to spread nitrogen, and how much to spread for optimising pasture growth.
At the same time, farmers were being encouraged to reduce the amount of imported fodder they bought.
One of the drivers of increased fodder imports — and therefore cost — was increased stocking rates. This was having a negative flow-on effect to farm profit.
John said the increased cost of farming in Ireland was connected to the choice of cow bred on the farm.
“Don’t hold on to a poor performing cow just because she was a good milking cow 10 years ago.”
The choice of cow was also going to be accounted for as the interest grew in accounting for a reduced carbon footprint on the farm.