Technologies involved
In common with the dairying technology projects at Greenmount Campus, the Enniskillen Campus Spring Herd Project encompasses a number of individual technologies within the overall production system. The technologies being transferred through the Spring Herd Project include:
- Breeding and fertility management to maintain a compact calving herd.
- Semen selection to breed replacements suitable for a moderate output spring calving system.
- Grass budgeting to ensure that optimum use is made of good quality grazed grass over as long a grazing season as feasible.
- Maintenance or rejuvenation of swards as necessary to optimise grass production for grazing or silage.
- Grazing swards of late maturing grass varieties to increase animal performance and reduce the management effort required to maintain sward quality in spring.
- Benchmarking financial performance with commercial spring calving herds to monitor profitability.
- Labour saving through (1) reducing the number of weekly milkings from the normal 14 to 13 initially from late summer (Sunday afternoon milking missed), and once per day milking for a period in autumn once average yield falls below 10 litres while keeping somatic cell count at an acceptable level and (2) drying off the complete herd for 4-6 weeks in mid winter.
- The production of milk of high composition quality suitable for milk processing.
- Adding value to surplus stock from the dairy herd.
