Curtins Farm

Sustainable farming systems research designed to maximise feed production and quality, and conversion to milk fat plus protein sales from within environmentally and animal friendly systems and resulting in €2,500 net farm profitability per hectare per year.

Meet the Curtins farm team:

Farm manager: Caroline O'Sullivan
Farm team: Tiernan Condon, Kieran Kellegher, Anthony O’Mahony and Fergal Roche
Researcher: Brendan Horan (Teagasc) and Luc Delaby (INRAe, France)
PhD Walsh Scholar: Alann Jezeque

Curtins research farm aims is to study ways to keep high animal performance from grazing animals with reduced chemical N inputs while increasing farm system profitability, enhancing product quality and ecosystem diversity. It is in this context that a system scale trial comparing three different swards grazed by Holstein Friesian and Holstein Friesian*Jersey crossbred cows have been launched in 2021. The sward and animal performance as well as the environmental and economic impact will be studied for 5 years.

Farm Profile

History: Purchased as a 29ha block for systems research in 1965.
Location: Latitude 50°07’N, Longitude 08°16’W
Area: 48 ha (effective)
Milking Cows: 150 (subject to scientific requirements)
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 2 weeks old while the heifer calves are reared off farm.
Soil Type: Free-draining acid brown earth of sandy loam to loam in texture
Paddocks: 120 (20 paddocks per treatment)

Dairy Infrastructure:

18 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
147 cow winter housing shed
3 underpass tunnels connecting the farm into one complete block
858,000 litres over ground slurry storage.

The animals used in this experiment consist of two different breeds. Half of the herd are pure Holstein Friesian and the other half are Jersey x Holstein Friesian.

	EBI (€)	Milk SI (€)	Fertility SI (€)	Calving SI (€)	Health SI (€)	Beef SI (€)	Maintenence SI (€)	Management SI (€)	F+P (kg)
Holstein-Friesian	188	54	86	43	4	-18	16	3	15
HF*JX-Bred	193	65	76	43	5	-27	28	4	17

Mean Calving Date: 17-Feb

As part of the management of intensive grazing, the focus on simple and productive forage systems has led to a limited range of plants being used in grazing swards and supported by higher levels of chemical fertilisers and supplemental feeds. With increasing pressures on all agricultural systems to reduce environmental impacts while increasing productivity, there is a growing awareness of the potential contribution of plant and animal species diversity to improve the performance of grazing systems through increased animal lifetime performance efficiency and reduced chemical fertiliser, feed and herbicide use requirements within our changing climatic conditions.

The potential of legumes and herbs

Grass-legume mixtures such as ryegrass-clover swards have been reported to reduce chemical N requirements, increase sward quality and animal intake and performance. More recently, a number of additional dicotyledonous plant species with high forage productivity potential have also been identified. Among these diverse plants, Chicory (Cichorium intybus L.) and Plantain (Plantago lanceolate L.) are deep-rooting broad-leafed forage forbs, which have high productivity and feed value. Recent studies suggest that the yield and quality of multi-species swards containing perennial ryegrass (PRG), white clover (WC), alternative legumes such as red clover and forage herbs such as chicory and plantain are comparable with PRG only and PRG-WC only grazing swards, with lower fertiliser N fertiliser and herbicide inputs required. In extensive low input studies in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Europe and Australasia, increased plant diversity has also been linked to increased N use efficiency, elevated soil carbon sequestration, enhanced food product character, enhanced biodiversity and increased resistance to climate change and weed invasion. To date however, there is limited data on the performance of intensively managed diverse pastures under grazing and there has been relatively low adoption of more diverse mixtures.

The project:

The objective of this cross-disciplinary project is to evaluate the potential of PRG WC and MSS swards to support high productivity with a reduced requirement for chemical N application in pursuance of more environmentally friendly regenerative grazing systems for Ireland. The new project on Curtins farm will run for 5 years and compare the performance of diverse animal genotypes (Holstein-Friesian and Jersey Holstein-Friesian crossbreds) and grazing swards (PRG, PRG-White clover (WC) and a multispecies sward (MSS)). The complete farm area have been reseeded in spring 2020 and 2021.

Figure 1: organization of the study

Table 1: Composition of the three swards sown (kg/ha)

Each farmlet is managed with a stocking rate of 2.7 cows/ha and in line with the objective of reducing the chemical fertiliser, the PRG will receive 250 kgN/ha/yr while the PRG-WC and the MSS will receive 125-150 kg N/ha/yr (Figure 1).

Measurements:

Sward measurements (Each grazing event)

Pre-grazing herbage mass, sward density
Botanical composition
Total net herbage accumulation and utilisation
Chemical analysis (OMD, NDF, ADF, CP)
Silage yields and quality

Animal measurements (Seasonal/Annual)

Milk yield daily and constituent weekly
Body weight and BCS biweekly
Incidence of ill-health/ lameness/ mastitis
Fertility performance

Environmental measurements (Seasonal/Annual)

Soil fertility
0N plot to measure N mineralisation
Nitrate concentrations in soil solution and groundwater
N and P balances and use efficiency
Green House Gas emissions modelling

Milk product character (Seasonal)

Characterise the variability of milk fine composition
Mineral, vitamin and amino acids
Heat stability, colour, texture and sensory properties

Financial measures

Impacts of systems on receipts and costs
Net profit (€/ha)

MultiMilk Project Partners

The project is a collaborative initiative involving Teagasc colleagues from Crops Environment and Land Use Programme at Johnstown Castle (Dr. Karen Daly, Professor Owen Fenton, Dr. John Finn, Dr. Karl Richards and Dr. David Wall), Rural Economy Research Programme (Dr, Cathal Buckley) and Food Programme (Dr. Laura Mascaraque, Dr. Jonathan Megan and Dr. John Tobin) in addition to collaborating scientists from Irish (Dr. Caroline Brophy, TCD; Dr. Doris Laepple, NUIG; Dr. Tom O’Callaghan and Dr. Alan Kelly, UCC and Dr. Zoe McKay, UCD) and international (Dr. Nandita Basu, University of Waterloo, Canada) universities.

Relevant Publications

Delaby L, Finn JA, Grange G and Horan B (2020). Pasture-Based Dairy Systems in Temperate Lowlands: Challenges and Opportunities for the Future. Front. Sustain. Food Syst. 4:543587. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2020.543587/full

Grange, G Finn, JA and Brophy, C. (2021). Mixture diversity increased yields and this effect was also maintained under drought. J Appl Ecol. 2021;00:1–12. https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1365-2664.13894

Horan B and Roche J (2020). Defining resilience in pasture-based dairy-farm systems in temperate regions. Animal Production Science, 2020, 60, 55–66

https://www.publish.csiro.au/an/fulltext/AN18601

Suter M, Huguenin-Elie O, Luscher A (2021). Multispecies for multifonctions: combining four complementary species enhances multifunctionality of sown grassland. Scientific reports, 2021, 11:3835

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-82162-y

McCarthy K.M., et al. (2020). Herb species inclusion in grazing swards for dairy cows – A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Dairy Science, 2020, vol.103 No.2.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022030219310537

Nyfeler D, et al. (2009). Strong mixture effects among four species in fertilized agricultural grassland led to persistent and consistent transgressive overyielding. J. Appl Ecol. 2009, Vol 46, pp.683-691.

https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1365-2664.2009.01653.x

Curtin's Farm Updates

Farm updates for Curtins farm will commence in mid to late March 2022