The Dairy Edge

For this week’s Grass10 grazing management update, Joseph Dunphy discusses PastureBase data, Dry Matter % and Predicted grass growth, rainfall and soil temperatures for the week. Joseph also discusses current grazing management and encourages farmers to focus on spring grass availability. Plus he has a grazing update from Eugene and Eoin Lawler, Co. Kildare. Link to this week’s Grass10 newsletter: https://bit.ly/Grass10-12thNovember For more episodes from the Dairy Edge podcast go to the show page at:https://www.teagasc.ie/animals/dairy/the-dairy-edge-podcast/ The Dairy Edge is a co-production with LastCastMedia.com

Joe Patton, Head of Dairy Knowledge Transfer in Teagasc, joins Stuart Childs on this week’s Dairy Edge to outline the factors that will make dairy more robust in the future in advance of the Teagasc National Dairy Conference entitled ‘Robust dairy farming for future challenges’, which is taking place at Limerick Racecourse on Wednesday November 27th. Joe discusses the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that will make dairy farming robust, namely: grass utilised, understanding financials and cost control, excellent breeding, healthy cows, working efficiently and environmental sustainability.  Joe outlines the significance of grass utilised as an indicator of profitability on farms and challenges farmers to look at this for their own farm.  He then explains that cost control is another significant factor and encourages farmers to take a few days over the next while to take a look at the cost of running their businesses. With an internationally-regarded breeding programme already in place, Joe recommends that people trust the science in terms of breeding in terms of milk production, fertility, maintenance and health.  A less clear cut area but important nonetheless, is labour and work efficiency with Joe challenging people to look at taking more time off from the farm. He finishes by outlining that all of what he has discussed will lend itself to delivering on the final KPI: environmental sustainability. For further info on the Teagasc National Dairy Conference go to: www.teagasc.ie/dairycon24 For more episodes from the Dairy Edge podcast go to the show page at:https://www.teagasc.ie/animals/dairy/the-dairy-edge-podcast/ The Dairy Edge is a co-production with LastCastMedia.com

On this week’s Grass10 grazing management update, Joseph Dunphy discusses PastureBase data, Dry Matter % and Predicted grass growth, rainfall & soil temperatures for the week.  Joseph also discusses current grazing management with super grazing conditions and above-average growth rates, plus he has a grazing update from Michael Walsh, Co. Kilkenny. Link to this week’s Grass10 newsletter:https://bit.ly/Grass10-5thNovember For more episodes from the Dairy Edge podcast go to the show page at:https://www.teagasc.ie/animals/dairy/the-dairy-edge-podcast/ The Dairy Edge is a co-production with LastCastMedia.com

Padraig O’Connor, Dairy Technician at Teagasc Grange joins Stuart Childs on this week’s Dairy Edge to discuss the role of SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) on farms. Padraig explains that the SOP is a step by step guide to completing a task. They are suitable for many tasks on farms such as preparing for milking, milking itself, treating a cow with mastitis and how to wash the milking machine correctly amongst many others. SOPs are an extremely useful way of communication and can help avoid mistakes being made due to misunderstanding. While often associated with farms that employ people, they have an equally important role to play on owner operator farms to help during holiday periods, during busy periods where help is needed which may be family or externally sourced, but most especially in the event of any incident which renders the farmer unable to do tasks with little or no notice requiring people to jump in to help to keep the show on the road. Padraig says that it is as simple as taking a piece of paper and recording the steps to complete the task in question, then getting someone that is preferably not overly familiar with the task to follow the instructions and ‘road test’ them. They may need tweaking and once happy with it, it should be laminated to make it waterproof and robust and placed in a visible location near the point of use. Padraig, Martina Gormley and Francis Quigley have some great information on SOPs and developing them for your own farm available at: https://www.teagasc.ie/animals/standard-operating-procedures/ For more episodes from the Dairy Edge podcast go to the show page at:https://www.teagasc.ie/animals/dairy/the-dairy-edge-podcast/ The Dairy Edge is a co-production with LastCastMedia.com