Sean Moher – May 2024

The silage season kicked off here last week. Only the drier parts are accessible yet, so we could only do half of what we wanted. We’ll get the rest soon as the Leaving Cert is starting and that means sunny weather.

The first cut of red clover silage yielded five bales per acre. This was last zero-grazed in September. It got 22 units of protected urea in early February. It has now got 3,000 gallons per acre of slurry.

Another normal grass silage field yielded eight bales per acre and has now been ploughed and set with a red clover silage mix.

We will now have 70% of our three cut silage ground in clover as well as 74% of the milking platform with clover.

Cows are cleaning out paddocks well and milk solids are at 2kg per cow. We always play on the safe side with the bloat-and-clover question, giving the cows a corner of a fresh clover field for an hour before dropping the wire.

Recently, I had Liz Duffy, a Teagasc Signpost climate advisor, out to look at the farm from an emissions perspective. Using the agnav.ie platform, the carbon footprint of milk for my farm for 2023 is 0.81kg/kg FPC Milk (down from 0.84 in 2022).

This is a figure we get every month on the milk statement, but it was great to get a better understanding of my own figures.

This figure, which is a good measure of farm efficiency, is driven from good output per cow (520kg MS sold per cow in 2023), 115kg chemical N per Ha, using 70% of our fertiliser as protected urea, spreading slurry using LESS, and getting as many days at grass as possible.

Compared to where I was with Nitrogen (N) use, our reduced level of total N use has given us a 3% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the farm.

By switching away from calcium ammonium nitrate (CAN) based products we have saved 7% in GHG emissions- so a 10% total reduction in GHGs from my farm which is a great figure to know. Using LESS (low emission slurry spreading) has saved us 6.2% on Ammonia emissions (Irish target is 5% reduction).

A further reduction of N use on farm by 10% and using 80% protected urea will give me another 1.5% reduction in GHGs.

I have most of my fertiliser bought for the year, but next year I must try and switch from the 18-6-12, 10-10-20 CAN based compounds to the newer protected urea based compounds.

The AgNav portal is handy, as you can adjust your figures and see what little changes can do to your carbon footprint.

Overall, we were very pleased with the results, as it showed we’re on the right course with regards to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.

I would encourage anyone to speak to their local Signpost advisor (contact through your local Teagasc office) and see what progress has been made on their own farm.