On Tuesday, farmers at the Dairygold/Teagasc farm walk on Robert O’Dea’s farm at Ballyphilip, Kilteely, Co Limerick, were told how Robert is achieving protein levels of almost 4%.

This excellent protein effectively delivers a 3c/l premium on all litres delivered for this Limerick farmer.

Robert is milking 97 cows and keeping 21 livestock units of replacements on a 43ha block of mostly free-draining land in east Limerick. Overall stocking rate is 2.73 cows per hectare. Last year, the farm grew over 15t of grass and total concentrate fed was 370kg per cow.

Current performance is 20 litres of milk at 4.40% fat and 3.98% protein or 1.73kg of milk solids per cow per day. To date, just 175kg of concentrate has been fed per cow and Robert expects the cows to average slightly more than 420kg of milk solids this year (1,150kg MS/ha).

So what is Robert’s secret to achieving such high solids?

“It all boils down to grass and breeding. Last autumn, I closed up the farm at an average farm cover of 650kg/ha on 10 November, which was a lot higher than normal. Carrying over this extra grass gave me a cushion right through spring and into April, when I’d normally be tight for grass,” he said.

As a result, Robert managed to get cows out to grass by day and night on 5 February and there was only one day that cows did not get grass this spring and that was because it was snowing. He achieved this by practicing on/off grazing during the wet periods. He says the secret to on/off grazing is not to feed too much in the shed and to “make sure the cows have an appetite before going out to grass.”

On the breeding front, about half of Robert’s herd is Jersey crossbred with the remainder Holstein Friesian. Herd average EBI is €173. The herd is plus 5kg for milk volume, plus 12.6kg for fat and plus 7.5kg for protein.

“Historically, we had a larger Holstein cow but over the last 10 years or so we have been breeding for a more compact and robust cow,” he said.

Despite having expanded the herd over the last few years, the age profile is still young with just over half the herd at third lactation or less. With good fertility results, he will be expecting the age profile to increase and yields to increase with it.

When choosing bulls, Robert’s strategy is to pick a team of bulls where each bull is strong on one particular aspect and then he matches the bulls to the cows that are weak in certain areas. For example, he would choose a bull very high in protein on a cow that was low in protein and similar for fat, volume, fertility, etc.

At the farm walk, programme advisers Ciara O’Shea and Adrian O’Callaghan encouraged farmers to focus on grass quality as a means of increasing their protein figures. Adrian said the average protein level on Dairygold farms was 3.5%. He said the difference in milk price between a milk supplier with a protein of 3.5% and a protein of 4%, like Robert’s, was 3.35 c/l.