How dependent is your farm on having a student this spring?
The hope of getting a student is now on the mind of many dairy farmers. The big question is: will this student help ease the workload? Will having this student make the spring more bearable or not?
Across all herd sizes, as Teagasc Dairy Specialist Martina Gormley explains, the interest and hope of having a student that will hit the ground running is often expected.
What is the objective of taking a student onto your farm? That the student gets experience and learns how a dairy farm operates. This objective should be met first; if the student ends up doing a few small tasks on the farm that is a bonus, not a given.
What’s at stake if you don’t have enough help and rely solely on a student?
- Ending up overworked, which can affect your health and safety.
- Your family’s/employee’s health and safety.
- Profitability.
With so much at stake, having enough help from people that are familiar with your farm and want to work and earn money from your farm is crucial. This help should not include students on short-term placement, who do not know your farm and arrive on your farm in February.
When we think of this further, it’s a big gamble not to have someone who is familiar with your farm, trained on some tasks and have a good attitude.
If we take a 100-cow herd that is producing 6,000L/cow at 40c/L, the total milk receipts in the year is €240,000. That’s not profit its income. However, in order to make a profit, we have to bring in income first. People are an asset to your business. Many farmers have said in hindsight herd performance suffered because there was not enough help on the farm.
For example:
- Cows not out to grass as much as they should be;
- Low milk solids from not getting to grass;
- Higher cost to keep cows indoors;
- Cows not milk recorded;
- Lower body condition score (BCS) and not corrected in time for breeding;
- Calves not fed sufficient colostrum and transition milk.
Just because you have survived the last number of calving seasons without ill health or poor herd performance doesn’t mean you will continue to get away with this. Now is the time to think outside the box in terms of who might be looking for some extra income. Ask locally, the worst that can happen is the person says no thanks. On the other side, this person could mention this to other friends/family. Remember it takes at least three months to find employees. January is too late, start now.
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Also read: Efficient practices and facilities key to reducing labour on Irish family dairy farms