Marion Beecher joins Emma-Louise Coffey on this week’s episode of The Dairy Edge to discuss a recent case study of farmers who achieve an average 8 hour working day on their dairy farm throughout the year.

Marion explains that in the study, farmers cited a compact, seasonal calving system as the key driver of their labour efficiency and recognised that the average 8 hour day ranged with longer working days during calving and breeding to much shorter days when cows are dried off

Marion identified some top practices that lend themselves to lower labour demands including a good milking parlour with less than 8 rows going through the parlour (farm facilities), group calving pens (work practices), automatic calf feeders, collars (technologies) and setting an evening finish time (work organisation).

Ahead of the spring calving season on dairy farms, Marion encourages farmers to get a good break and well deserved rest, prepare as much as possible by having facilities set up and the relevant supplies to hand on farm and to ensure there is sufficient help available for the calving.

For more information:

https://www.teagasc.ie/media/website/events/2023/Marion-Beecher-Presentation---Getting-to-grips-with-labour-challenges-on-dairy-farms.pdf

For more episodes from the Dairy Edge podcast go to the show page at: 

https://www.teagasc.ie/animals/dairy/the-dairy-edge-podcast/

The Dairy Edge is a co-production with LastCastMedia.com