Carnaross Mart in Co. Meath is set to host a full dairy herd dispersal sale on Wednesday, June 26, featuring over 200 cows.
The dispersal sale is set to include over 100 autumn-calving cows and over 100 spring-calving cows averaging 6,400L at 4.65% fat and 3.7% protein averaging 550kg of milk solids/cow. All lots are eligible for export.
The dairy herd being dispersed on the day belongs to well-known dairy farmer based in Harristown, Navan, Co. Meath, PJ Nolan and his brother John Nolan.
PJ previously worked in farming media and speaking to Agriland, he explained why his dairy herd is being sold off and why he is going to switch to tillage farming.
The retiring dairy farmer suffered from a stroke last March and while he is making a good recovery, PJ has decided to cease his dairy enterprise and convert the farm to tillage.
PJ said: “I went out to milk the cows one morning and I couldn’t see them – so that was a bit of a problem. I went into the doctor and then suffered a stroke the next day.
“I was driving a loader in the yard the night before and the loader hit a wall and I hit my head of the window of the loader and cracked the window. The next morning I got up to milk the cows and couldn’t and I was in hospital for the next six months.”
PJ believes this may have been what brought on his sight loss and the stroke.
One way to get poor is to get sick,” he said and added: “I can’t keep going on [dairy farming] any more and while my sight has recovered a bit, we have to change things around [on the farm] a good bit.
“We were going to lease out the farm but it’s going to take too much money to fix up the yard for the next 20 years and we lost a lot of rented land.
“We had 380 milking [cows] ourselves [at peak] and we had a lot of rented land but we have lost a good bit of that since I got sick so it’s not practical to keep going [dairy farming] with the set up we have.
PJ, who is farming in partnership with his brother John explained: “We have it [the land] rented for this year – I’m going to put it into tillage and spuds after that.”
The Meath man was thankful for the support of his friends and neighbours especially Terry and his son Jack Kearns who took over the work load on his farm when he got sick.
“It’s exactly 50 years from we started milking and last year was the first year in 49 years I didn’t milk a cow on Christmas Day.”
He explained that it was taking 30 labour hours/day every day to run the farm which encompassed over 500ac at peak, 3/4 of which were rented.
With 50 years experience in dairy farming, the Meath man has seen a great deal of change in the sector and gave his outlook for the future: “I think the future in milk is going to be robotics because the labour thing is so difficult at the moment.
“The one thing for sure is that farming is going to change fast – in the future. I think the robots are inevitable, they’re the same as milking machines were to hand milking.”
PJ praised the hospital staff who cared for him during his illness and also the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) staff for helping him and said “to be honest, I’d love to be still at it [dairy farming]. I’ve loads of energy but when I got sick, that was it”.
The dairy herd dispersal sale will take place on Wednesday, June 26, at 12:00p.m at Carnaross Mart.