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Video: New dairy entrant on his expandable 16-unit parlour decision

In the video above, Richard Nolan from Co. Kilkenny, discusses his recent conversion to dairy farming and the choices he made for his new set-up - including an expandable 16-unit parlour.

Farming at Castlewarren, in southeast Kilkenny, Nolan originally ran a sucker-beef enterprise.

Commenting on the switch, he said: "We're recently new entrants into dairying.

"We were suckler-beef up to now and we made the decision to go dairying. I got speaking to the sales rep there from Pearsons [Pearson Milking Technology] back in 2019 and so after talking to a couple of Teagsac people and that, we looked into the dairying."

With the decision made to finalise the switch, Nolan's next step was to decide on a milking parlour for his new enterprise.

After what he described as a "lot of debate", himself and Tom Ryan - who designed the project - agreed on a parlour layout.

"We put up a four span shed and decided to put 16 units into it and it will fit another four units down the road if we need," Nolan explained.

"We also put in a handling facility in the shed as well and [there is] room there for drafting cows down the road if we need to go down that way as well."

When it came to the build, Nolan was happy to keep it local.

"[I] got in the local guys there to do the concreting," he said.

"Tom Nolan and Gary Armitage erected the shed. My brother there did all the groundwork."

When it came to the parlour details, Nolan decided to go with a head locking system, which he admits to being very happy with as it gives "great control over the cows".

"We started out milking 80 heifers and after getting two or three rows trained, the rest of the cows - there's no bother training them to the head-locking," he said.

"We’ve put in the autowash and we also put in a dump line. We hope to add in meters down the road – the parlour is left in a situation that we can do that.

"We're milking 80 cows probably with a focus of somewhere between 100/120 cows -so the 16-unit parlour is ample for that."

Throughout the process of switching to a dairy enterprise, Richard consulted heavily with Pearson Milking Technology, and admits to being "very happy" with his experience.

"[We're] very happy with Pearson; they came along with our parlour, dropped it in the yard, maybe two or three days later the machine was up and running, just in time for our first cow calving," he concluded.

Information on how to contact Pearson Milking Technology to discuss the Irish company’s Industrial Milking Parlour solutions and Express Fit One Day Switch options can be found by clicking here.

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