Starting Dairying Through Partnership

Starting a dairy partnership requires; communication, the right balance of experience and qualifications; and appropriate finances, according to Ciaran and Seamus Seery who have doubled their herd size since 2002.

21 February 2013

2 minute read

Introduction

After qualifying from Mountbellew Agricultural College in 1996, I spent three years with the Farm Apprentice Board (FAB) programme and worked in Galway, Kilkenny and Meath. I quali?ed in 1999. My father, Seamus, was still actively farming at home, so I worked on dairy farms after qualifying from FAB and by 2002 I was working as a farm manager. Working away from home allowed me to experience different farm operations or as my father says “knocked the edges off me”.

It was always my intention to return back to the home farm. However at the time the farm was carrying 55 dairy cows and rearing all claves to stores. Did the farm have the potential to deliver an income to me and to my parents? At the time the Celtic Tiger was really starting to take hold and many of my friends were getting big wages on construction jobs around the country. It was decision time for me and my family. At the same time the partnership scheme was launched. We were advised by our Teagasc Adviser at the time, Peter Burke, that we were eligible to form a farm partnership.

The main advantage for the partnership at the time was we could freely access quota. We sat down with our adviser, accountant and solicitor and drew up the partnership agreement.

Our plan was to increase cow numbers and continue to improve ef?ciency. On entering the partnership, we purchased as much quota as possible. Having bought the quota we were now in a rush to grow our cow numbers to match our quota size. We expanded rapidly. Maybe, in hindsight, we would have built slower over time and concentrated more on breeding, but we did bene?t over the last 10 years from an increased Single Farm Payment.

Progress to Date

2002:        Partnership formed
                Milking 55 cows
                Started to purchase quota
                Started to purchase cows

2004       Joined Purchasing Group

2008        Built new cubicle shed
                No more cows purchased

2008        Built slurry storage (lagoon)

2009        New milking parlour (20 units)
                Part of the farm transferred to me

2012        Milking 110 cows, rearing surplus replacements
                 Stocked at 3.45 cows on the milking block

Table 1: Cow Numbers and Performance Over the Last 10 Years
Year	Cows	SR	Kg MS/Ha
2002	55	1.77	766
2003	68	2.19	937
2004	90	2.9	1162
2005	101	3.25	1374
2006	93	3	1293
2007	104	3.35	1374
2008	106	3.42	1388
2009	100	3.22	1277
2010	115	3.71	1420
2011	107	3.45	1493
Average	94	3.02	1256