Meet Michael & Alex McCarthy, Signpost dairy farmers
We are farming in a partnership milking 170 cows on a grass based system. We farm 104 hectares. A major challenge we see coming at us over the next couple of years are the environmental challenges. As Signpost farmers we want to increase biodiversity on our farm. Read our June update here
The McCarthy Family are the 2021 National Winners of the NDC and Kerrygold Quality Milk Awards
We want to increase biodiversity on our farm and have incorporated another 400 meters of hedgerow on the farm. We have been doing this over the last number of years. Last year we put in about one kilometre of hedgerow.
Breeding, reseeding and cutting silage
For the last month we have been breeding, reseeding and cutting silage. The end of May was our fourth week of breeding and we are very happy at the way it went so far. We reseeded 2.5 hectares reseeded and we plan on taking out another 2 hectares in early June. We are sorry we didn’t take it out earlier as grass growth has been excellent for the last few weeks. We included 2 kgs of clover in all of our new reseeds. We broadcast and stitched in clover last year and we are seeing the benefits of doing it now. The first cut of 85 acres was taken at the end of May and we spread slurry in the first week of June. The slurry is tested as well.
We were also busy on the farm preparing for the NDC walk. We put in a new milking parlour and it is nearly up and running at this stage. We plan to spread lime over the summer as well as we have a few paddocks that need to be rectified.
2021 National Winners of the NDC and Kerrygold Quality Milk Awards
The McCarthy Family are the 2021 National Winners of the NDC and Kerrygold Quality Milk Awards.
This farm walk, held on their farm on 15th June was organised by Teagasc, with support of Kerry Agribusiness, the National Dairy council and Ornua. It celebrates the excellence of Irish Dairy Farming, highlighting annually the NDC and Kerrygold Quality Milk Awards.
The farm walk addressed the following topics:
- Review of the McCarthy family farm performance
- Producing high quality milk with low SCC and TBC
- Establishing and managing high performance clover swards
- Selective dry cow therapy- making better decisions with milk recording
- Carbon efficient milk from pasture based dairy systems
Keep up to date with the happenings on the McCarthy's farm at Michael & Alex McCarthy
Find out more about the Teagasc Signpost Programme