How a Wexford farmer moved from beef to dairy

There was some surprise when it emerged that suckler farmer Michael Doran was taking up dairying. The farmer from Duncormick, Co Wexford, was a well-known figure in the beef sector and had served as the IFA's livestock chairman.

“There was a mixed reaction, to be honest, from both dairy and beef farmers,” he recalls.

Some were concerned to see one of the better beef farmers exiting, while others said they wished they had the courage to do it years ago.

The most negative reaction came from some existing dairy farmers who felt that a rush of newcomers like Doran would cause the price of milk to collapse.

The 39-year-old has been farming since he left Rockwell agricultural college in 1993.

"The family farm was a traditional drystock Wexford farm with sucklers, sheep and tillage," he says.

He briefly toyed with the idea of milking but could not do so without a milk quota.

When he applied for a quota from Wexford Creamery he was offered 1,500 gallons – it would only allow him to milk one cow. “So I wasn’t going to start milking based on that.”

His second child, James, was born with Down syndrome in September 2012, and had some serious medical issues. Michael spent a lot of time at his hospital bed and often passed the time surfing the web. One day he started to look at the profits being made by top dairy farmers.

“While I was making €100 from every suckler cow I had, the [top] dairy guys were making €1,000 for every cow they had in the same year. That really was an eye-opener for me. And we were always in the top 10 per cent of beef [farmers]. The average dairy farmer was making €800 a cow so, if I could be even an average dairy farmer, I would increase my profitability per cow eightfold.”

Income falling

Doran was also watching his income falling and came to the conclusion that changes in the sector would reduce his income by €25,000-€30,000.

“Where was that money going to come from? Beef was where the heart was but you have to be realistic too.”

In May 2013, he applied for a milk quota under a scheme introduced a few years earlier for new entrants to dairying, and received an allocation of 200,000 litres. He built a 24-unit milking parlour and did some work upgrading roadways before going shopping for in-calf heifers.

He sold about 60 suckler cows which paid for 80 in-calf Jersey cross heifers and milked his first cow in January 2014.

“I had never milked a cow in my life,” he recalls, and says he got a lot of help and advice from Teagasc’s Moorepark dairy research centre.

So did he make the right decision? “Yes, it’s going very well. We expected to lose money last year but we actually made money. We milked 78 cows last year, and I’d be hoping to milk about 135 this year. Next year, we’ll be milking between 180 and 200, and that’s probably the limit of what the farm can carry without getting more land.”

Last year his milk price was in the top 1 per cent of Glanbia suppliers, and he is now aiming to be in the top 20 per cent of dairy farmers for profitability next year.

He would encourage anyone thinking about switching to give it some serious thought. "The opportunities are there. You have a lot of people saying we are going to flood the market with milk, but the extra milk Ireland is going to produce in the next five years could be produced by America in one year."

There is a perception that dairying is a relentless business with no prospect of a day off but he has had the opposite experience. “There’s less work but more discipline. You have to be there morning and evening to milk your cows, but when you get used to that it’s not a big burden.”

Evening milking

Previously he had about 13 groups of animals grazing and was always busy micro-managing the grazing needs of those different groups. Now he does his first milking at 7am and finishes the evening milking at about 5pm.

“I actually have more time now with the family. By 9am in the morning I’m finished with the milking, and if I want to do something with the family I can. Before that there was always something to do because you had so many groups of animals.”

Last year, he hired a neighbour to milk his cows at the weekends so he could be free every second Sunday. “I wanted to start as I meant to go on,” he says. He and his wife, Ciara, have three children, aged six, two and one.

He plans to have a full-time worker on the farm when cow numbers reach 200. “It’s as complicated or as simple as you want to make it yourself.”

Before he started milking he worried that he might not enjoy it. “But I do. They are very friendly animals to work with and you get used to it. I had spent 20 years building up my suckler herd so I was nervous giving that up and moving into something different but there’s a nice challenge there. ”

The sheds in his yard dwarf a little, low-roofed stone house. This is the original byre where a handful of cows were milked by his ancestors. “It serves no purpose now but it’s nostalgic to think that there was milking here once and now here we are back milking again.”