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You are > Home > Knockcroghery farmer shortlisted in National Dairy Council quality milk awards scheme
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Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Knockcroghery farmer shortlisted in National Dairy Council quality milk awards scheme
DAIRY FARMER Seamus Murray from Racecourse, Knockcroghery was recently shortlisted for a visit by the national judging panel in the 2010 NDC Quality Milk Awards, the national competition which sets out to identify and reward top dairy farmer.
Seamus supplies milk to Connacht Gold.
Seamus farmers with his brother and nephew just outside Knockcroghery. He milks 80 cows, supplying Connacht Gold from 90 acres on the Galway/ Roscommon border.
All calves (bulls and heifers) are sold off the farm to Seamus’ brother, Sean, as baby calves and Seamus buys back the replacement heifer calves just before they calve down.
“Dairy co-ops who submit their top farmers to represent their entire group of farmer suppliers, have already undertaken a form of shortlisting for the awards and so the quality of entries is very high,” explained NDC Chief Executive, Helen Brophy.
“Nomination for the NDC Quality Milk Awards is, in its own right, a reflection of very high farming standards at national level, which we believe the farmers involved can be particularly proud of.”
National judges for this year’s NDC Quality Milk Awards are Professor Paddy Wall, Associate Professor of Public Health at UCD; Dr David Gleeson, Milk Quality Research, Teagasc and Jack Kennedy, Dairy Editor, Irish Farmers Journal.
In the next phase of the awards, the judges will assess all of the technical and background data on the finalists alongside information from the inspection of their farms, in order to select the overall national winner.
It is expected that the final results will be known in the autumn, with the overall winning farmer set to receive a prize of 5,000 and the NDC Quality Milk Awards perpetual trophy at an awards ceremony in September or October of this year.
The NDC Quality Milk Awards help to build awareness about the Irish dairy farmers who are behind Irish dairy brands and create an opportunity to showcase to consumers the top quality of dairy farming in the Republic of Ireland.
The awards also provide a platform for the dairy sector, for co-ops to highlight to their own suppliers the technical requirements, standards and techniques which drive top quality milk production.
On the Murray farm the washing routine after morning milking is to first rinse the eight-unit plant with cold water.
This is followed by circulating a hot wash (80 degrees C) with two cups of detergent, 2 x 300 cc MICIP, which is on trial this year with Connacht Gold and is dumped after use. The machine is cold rinsed and finally rinsed with a product called Serpent.
Last year, Seamus used Circodine P as the main wash detergent. After milking in the evening, the same routine is used, but without hot water, so 700 cc of detergent is circulated with cold water.
The milking routine starts off with pre-dipping using Oxyfoam ‘pre foam’. This is dried off with a paper towel before attaching clusters. All cows are stripped out before milking.
Any cows known to have high cell counts or mastitis are held until last for milking to reduce the treat of disease cross over. Any antibiotics are written into the calendar in the dairy and from there are transferred into the medicines register.
The one thing that Seamus seemed to believe in outside of the normal best practice, was teat spraying cows in the weeks leading up to calving. Seamus said “keeping mastitis low means better milk quality and fewer problems in the parlour”.
“Last winter, as soon as the cows started bedding down, I sprayed them with iodine to protect the teats as they filled up before calving. It reduced the number of mastitis cases in the early lactation and a good start is half the battle,” said Seamus.
Seamus uses a five-litre knapsack on his back, with a length of hosing that ends with a spray nozzle and when the cows are lined up feeding in the morning, he sprays the teats.
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