Dara Killeen farms in partnership with his father Charlie on a dairy farm in Meelick, County Galway, along the River Shannon on the Offaly – Tipperary border. The 32-year old former FBD Young Farmer of the Year is passionate about building a farm business which runs as autonomously, efficiently and
safely as possible, allowing for a positive quality of life for himself and his young family.
The Killeen’s are new entrants to dairy farming, having switched from a beef and sheep enterprise in 2019. They now milk almost 170 cows a day and Dara credits the support of a focus farm programme with Aurivo and employing advanced farm technology for his successful transition to dairy.
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“When we decided to go milking cows people told me it was a bad idea and that I would always be tied to the milking parlour. But I think that is someone’s choice. I didn’t want to sign up to that. I’ve a young family and we have priorities on that front so I employ local relief milkers and maximise the use of technology on the farm.
We wanted to set up so that the farm could be a one-person operation if it ever needed to be. Farm technology has a huge role to play in the future of farming as it automates many daily farm tasks which gives you the time to make better management decisions and be more on top of things,” Dara said.
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Tech Benefits
From the outset, Dara has installed technology on the farm to help to run it as efficiently as possible. He uses a plate meter linked by Bluetooth with his phone to assist in grassland management; he has installed cluster removers and an automatic washer in the milking parlour; and he invested in a Saber Sorting gate early on to assist in the automatic drafting of cows.
“The Saber gate is invaluable for calving and breeding seasons when we are drafting out cows to calve, or for AI every few days. If you didn’t have the gate you would need 2 or three people on hand to help as there’s a lot of stock movement. My relief milkers have the app too so it’s not like I even need to be there a lot of the time. We run the cows through the milking parlour and down through the gate and they are drafted so you can do the full herd of cows in 20 minutes.”
For Dara, the main benefits of the drafting gate initially was to help with calving and breeding but he says there are a lot of fringe benefits to the technology in terms of animal health, drying off cows and vaccine administration.
“If I see a lame cow coming in from the field, I can put her details into my phone and she will automatically be drafted. We are using selective dry cow therapy and we dry off cows in batches on 20 at a time. I can sit down with the laptop in the evening, take out my milk recording report to look at what cow is suitable for selective dry cow and put her number into the app and then forget about her and she will automatically be drafted in the morning. It also frees up your head space as the decisions are made online beforehand.”
Heat Detection
As a new entrant to dairy farming, Dara admits that heat detection was something he struggled with in the early years as it was a new skillset he had to learn.
“Heat detection is a really hard job to get right as there’s so much going on at that time in the year. I did feel like I was leaving money behind and my breeding wasn’t where it should have been so I looked to see what technology solutions were available. Last Spring was our first with SenseHub and it literally was like breeding wasn’t going on it was so stress free – I had the drafting gate, I had the apps, my milkers had all the apps so I didn’t have to be there at all times. We also switched to all AI last year and it was a brilliant success.”
Following a number of recent acquisitions MSD Animal Health Ireland now owns both the Saber and Allflex brands and has a dedicated sales and support team in Ireland for the full portfolio of Saber and Allflex products, including SenseHub.