Breeder aims to milk Baileys success

Damian McCarney

The sunny southeast is a different world from Cavan.
“We’ve had very little rain,” reports Philip Jones, during a break from bringing in straw at his Killowen farm to take the Celt’s call. “Only for that rain that came last week we would have been feeding silage to all the cows - we were getting very tight. The grass was just disappearing - it was just burning up.”
The grass may not always be greener in Gorey fields, but they often are. Philip’s green fields have produced Hallow Advent Twizzle 3, the latest winner of the Bailey’s Champion Dairy Cow. The Jones had previously won the dry cow sector and had taken reserve cow and honourable mention on a couple of occasions but this was the first time that they won the biggie.
“It was the one competition we had never won so it was great to win the thing outright,” says Philip. “It was a great day out.
“The cow that won it for us, the Twizzle cow, she had won at the Spring Fair earlier in the year and she was the reserve at Balmoral, so she was having a good year so I was hoping she would be there or thereabouts, but you never know... she was getting pretty late in her lactation, she was going to be calved 12 months - until you get them out it’s hard to know what they are going to look like. But you’re always hopeful.”
Philip acknowledges that winning rosettes is key to promoting the breeding end of their enterprise. They sold a daughter of Twizzle to Italy and it has since won its class in the European Show in France.
“Every year we always sell a good portion of cattle for breeding, as in heifers or bulls, it’s always a big thing here, the pedigree side and the marketing side is a massive thing here - the more of these competitions you do well, the more people get to know where you are and who you are, sop it makes a huge difference.
He adds: “We’re not a massive farm, that’s why if we can keep a good quality of animal, keep our production high, and then sell of some progeny for heifers and some bulls, it increases our income a bit.
“And it’s very interesting too - you are not just getting up every day to milk cows, the whole pedigree side of it is very interesting.”
Philip took charge of the 120 acre farm from his father, Mervyn a couple of years ago and milks between 60-80 cows.
“No,” Mervyn replies when asked if he still has a hand in the farm, “only when I’m wanted, which is usually every day.”
Mervyn notes that selling progeny is all the more important given the depressed milk prices.
“I just don’t know how long it can sustain the way it is. We are probably one of the luckier ones, because our sale of stock would be well in balance with our milks sales, which is lucky - you get those few years when you have a bit of success and people come looking to buy stock off you and that’s probably what’s keeping the head above the water at the moment. I really do feel sorry for young guys at the moment... And then if they improve next year, it’s going to take till the next year to pay back what they lost in the bad years. At the moment it’s just a dead end job, which is a sad, sad situation.”

Bad years
The Celt relays a sentiment made by a dairy farmer friend who said, ‘You have to be able to cope with one bad year’. Mervyn was having none of it:
“This is what annoys me sometimes - if it was a plumber or electrician - they don’t have to put up with bad years - why should we always be the scapegoats and work for a year for nothing just because them who decides say so.
“They did a way with quotas which was probably the worst that ever happened to us in the start, but the way they did away with milk quotas was absolute stupidity beyond belief. It should have been phased out to let the industry get used to the higher production.”
He laughs as he realises he’s starting to sound like a “whingeing farmer”.
“I wouldn’t mind but Germany are making money, and all the milk producers. We have a Northern Ireland lorry coming to a farm at the far end of Wexford to collect milk, and they are not collecting it to lose money on it - Strathroy are coming past my door to collect milk - they’re not collecting it from me,” he insists.
A good natured man, Mervyn ends on an upbeat note: “I get the pension now, and it’s like having a bull calf every week without calving it.”