Clonakilty Agricultural College Farm

Clonakilty Agricultural College has been involved in agricultural education since 1905 and since 2012 has been undertaking research in dairy production systems and breed comparisons.

Meet the team

Research Officer: Brian McCarthy
Farm Manager: Eoin McCormack
PhD Student: Megan Bock
Farm staff: John Murphy, Kieran Keohane, Andrew Fitzgibbon, Caroline Burke, Jerry O’Regan

History: The farm was purchased in 1905 as an educational training facility and has been involved in education since then. Since 2012, in conjunction with Teagasc Moorepark, dairy systems research has been undertaken on the farm along with other component and plot research.

Location: Darrary, Clonakilty, Co.Cork P85 AX52

Area: 84 ha (dairy effective, 29 ha Drystock (beef & sheep) effective)

Milking Cows: 180 – 200 (subject to scientific and educational requirements). The herd in Clonakilty is comprised of purebred Holstein-Friesian, Jersey X Holstein-Friesian, Norwegian Red x (Jersey x Holstein-Friesian) and Holstein-Friesian crosses. The average EBI of the herd is €190.

System: Spring calving dairy herd. Typically cows are turned out to pasture directly post-calving and annually achieve a 300-day grazing season. All male calves are sold at 4 weeks old to a contract rearer to bring them to weanling stage for sale or to finish. All replacement stock are reared on-farm.

Soil Type: Free-draining acid brown earth of light loam to gley soil loam in texture

Paddocks: 110 (80 experimental paddocks, 20 paddocks per treatment)

Dairy Infrastructure:

20 unit herringbone parlour with automatic cow ID, automatic cluster removers, daily electronic milk weighting and sampling, in parlour feeding, milking behaviour recording, weighting and drafting facilities
200 cow winter housing shed

ClonakiltyAgriculturalCollegeMap (134KB, PDF)

Currently the Clonakilty herd is comprised of purebred Holstein-Friesian, Jersey X Holstein-Friesian, Norwegian Red x (Jersey x Holstein-Friesian) and Holstein-Friesian crosses.

Mean Calving date: 16th February

No. of 1st lactation animals: 40

Sires used:

Holstein-Friesian – FR6076, FR4571, FR6954, FR4513, FR4547

Jersey - JE6238 (sexed), JE4989 (sexed), JE5386 (sexed)

Beef – AU4836, SA6850, AA4878, HE6856, SA6346, AU6685, AU6918, AA6331, HE6841

	Sub-Indexes
EBI	Milk	Fertility	Calving	Beef	Maintenace	Management	Health
€162	€55	€61	€39	-€19	€20	€3	€3

(2021, ICBF)

Identifying strategies to improve nitrogen use in grazing dairy systems

Maintaining or increasing milk production whilst simultaneously reducing the environmental footprint of dairying (both from a greenhouse gas and nutrient loss perspective) is a key goal for the long term future of the Irish dairy industry. Perennial ryegrass white clover swards (at 23% annual sward white clover content) have been shown to increase both milk production per cow (+ 48 kg milk solids per cow) and herbage production (+ 1.2 t DM/ha) over a number of years compared with perennial ryegrass-only swards in the Clonakilty Agricultural College systems experiment at a stocking rate of 2.75 cows/ha and high levels of nitrogen fertilizer (250 kg/ha per year). However, the persistency of white clover has been shown to be negatively correlated to high nitrogen fertilizer levels and there is a requirement to further investigate how a reduction in nitrogen fertilizer use will affect performance in intensive dairy systems (i.e. stocking rate > 2.5 cows/ha) utilising perennial ryegrass-white clover swards and also perennial ryegrass-only swards. The objective of this project is to investigate strategies to improve nitrogen use in dairy systems, specifically in relation to sward type (i.e. perennial ryegrass-only and perennial ryegrass-white clover) and nitrogen fertilizer level (225, 150 and 75 kg nitrogen/ha per year).

Overall Project Objective

The objective of this project is to use meta-analytical methods, a systems experiment and component plot work to identify strategies to reduce nitrogen fertilizer use in dairy systems. The specific objective of the systems experiment in Clonakilty Agricultural College is to assess the biological efficiency of perennial ryegrass-only and perennial ryegrass-white clover swards receiving varying fertiliser rates of 225, 150 or 75 kg nitrogen/ha per year, giving 4 grazing treatments a perennial ryegrass-only sward receiving 225 kg nitrogen/ha, a perennial ryegrass-only sward receiving 150 kg nitrogen/ha, a perennial ryegrass-white clover sward receiving 150 kg nitrogen/ha and a perennial ryegrass-white clover sward receiving 75 kg nitrogen/ha.

This experiment will describe treatment effects in terms of:

Milk production performance (per cow and per hectare)
Herbage growth and utilization
Economic performance, greenhouse gas and nutrient footprints

Methodology

This project will use both a systems experiment and component plot work to identify strategies to reduce nitrogen use in dairy systems. The farm systems experiment will use a randomized design with 4 grazing treatments, a perennial ryegrass-only sward receiving 225 kg nitrogen/ha, a perennial ryegrass-only sward receiving 150 kg nitrogen/ha, a perennial ryegrass-white clover sward receiving 150 kg nitrogen/ha and a perennial ryegrass-white clover sward receiving 75 kg nitrogen/ha., comprised of 28 cows each,. Individual animal error will be used to test for differences between treatments. Animals will be randomly allocated to treatments based on breed, parity, genetic merit (Economic Breeding Index), calving date, body weight and body condition score. Each grazing treatment will have a separate farmlet of 20 paddocks and will be stocked at 2.56 cows/ha. Component experiments will be utilized within the framework of the overall systems experiment to gain a greater understanding of the effect of sward type and nitrogen fertilizer on the soil (e.g. nitrogen mineralization), animal (e.g. dry matter intake) and sward (e.g. nutritive value). A plot study investigating a range of nitrogen fertilizer application rates and strategies on white clover swards will also be undertaken.

Clonakilty Agricultural College Farm

Meet the team

Identifying strategies to improve nitrogen use in grazing dairy systems

Overall Project Objective

Methodology

2017

2016

2015

2014