Dairy farmer strives for sustainability and maximising income

Hugh set out his farm management with clear goals for the future, detailing his farm performance alongside describing some of the heritage that is clearly preserved for the

future.

Farming at the family’s Ballydevitt Farm, Aghadowey, near Coleraine, which was originally acquired by the Harbison family in 1965, Hugh had graduated from Newcastle University with a degree in Agriculture with Business Management after which he went to Australia for work for a spell before returning to run the farm managed by his father.

It was a farm which has been visited by the now King Charles in 1996 on one of his visits to Northern Ireland.

The farm in total has 110 hectares with a further 30 hectares rented and is split onto four blocks where up to 190 crossbred dairy cows, bred from New Zealand genetics, are milked.

They produce an average of 7941litres per cow, with composition of 4.67 per cent butterfat, 3.65% protein and 136 SCC using 2.25t concentrates.

The trend in recent times has been to produce more milk solids rather than milk yields with a goal of producing 700kg milk solids per cow by 2025.

The best cows and best bulls are bred which has resulted in less milk but higher milk solids.

The cows were housed in early October this year and Hugh described 2024 as a year to forget, as it was frustrating to get jobs done. Overall during the year, just 8.3t of grass was

grown compared with 11.4t in 2022.

Hugh managed to get four cuts of silage with 20 acres of forage rye harvested. He believes the quantity of silage will be an issue. Protein is also an issue as it was so cold in June.

He got some reseeding done at the end of June using an Erth Direct Drill but it was slow to germinate and grow and grazed in September before getting a coat of slurry.

He also planted three paddocks of multi-species mixtures which performed reasonably well until some of the herbs had declined.

He then spoke about the farm’s PH and importance of getting the basics right. His soils are high in magnesium.

He feels 6.2ph is too low and would be striving for 7.

Regarding sustainability, Hugh said profitability should be the number one goal to achieve that.

Hugh got involved in the ARCZero project where selected farms across Northern Ireland worked with the industry to investigate practical ways to measure, manage and reduce carbon emissions from dairy, beef and sheep farming.

The project uses advanced technology to test soil and find out about how much carbon it can capture and LIDAR technology is used to measure the green area of trees and hedges for Carbon sequestration measurement.

One of the practical results of this is that five kilometres of hedges from the 18kms on the farm have been left to grow higher, to capture more carbon.