Precision Dairy Farming Series: Inside Ireland’s dairy tech trends | Ep. 3

Experience the energy and insights from the 2025 Precision Dairy Farming Conference.  

In this episode, you’ll hear from Teagasc researchers Dr Bernadette O’Brien and Dr Lisa Parce, who share what Ireland’s pasture-based farmers are doing with precision technology. How are Irish farmers making tech decisions, what motivates them to adopt new tools, and which technologies are becoming more common? Bernadette and Lisa also break down the social and farm-system factors linked to higher adoption, from herd size and labour needs, to environmental regulations and pasture management. 

View the conference highlights, proceedings and more 

Have feedback or ideas for future episodes? Email us at talkingdairy@dairynz.co.nz

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Stay up to date with advice, latest research, tools and resources. Read, browse, scroll, listen, or be there in person. Visit dairynz.co.nz/get-connected 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to Talking Dairy. I'm your host Jack McGowan from DairyNZ. This episode is part of a special series recorded at the 2025 Precision Dairy Farming Conference in Auto Tahi, Christchurch. And I'm joined by two researchers from Chargus in Ireland, Bernadette O'Brien and Lisa Pass. Ireland's pasture-based system is remarkably similar to ours, making their insights especially valuable. So let's get into it. Bernie, what are the key similarities and differences between Irish and New Zealand dairy farm systems that make your research so relevant to us?

SPEAKER_00 0:35

The main factor there is the fact that we both have a seasonal dairy production system. Because of that, we have similar challenges in the grassland area and very much so as well in the labour area and the labour efficiency and similar people on farm issues.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Yeah. Have you been to New Zealand before, both of you?

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Uh yes, I have. I have not.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

This is my first time.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Are you getting to spend extra time here?

SPEAKER_02 0:58

Yes. And on some farms as well. We've arranged cross visits to extend the value of the conference, which has already been valuable.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Oh, good. And you will have gone to the farm tour. Yes. Awesome. Bernie, can you give us a snapshot of so the systems are similar between the two countries, but as I understand it, the kind of economic context that Irish dairy farmers work in might be a bit different from here in New Zealand.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Yes, that's correct. I suppose the scale is the different scene there. I mean, our average herd size at the moment is 92, 93 cows. Obviously, there are quite a few very large farms as well. But uh the scale is quite different. And uh the family farm income, I suppose, that we would be looking at would be approximately 108,000 euros at the moment. That changes, and we've had a couple of very good years in the last number of years and uh one year where the profitability was reduced, but it is it is over 100,000 now on average per farm.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Okay, so smaller farms and is the business structure similar or less.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

The business structure is quite different, I suppose, in the particularly in relation to the people element, in that most of the uh all of the farms really in Ireland would be family farm uh units, while they can be family farm units in uh in New Zealand as well. The difference there is that they would have quite a few hired workers and external people and maybe students as well, and that. Whereas in the Irish situation, it is generally the family unit and uh maybe the children or the offspring helping at weekends. What we, I suppose, have been trying to do from a labour perspective in the past times is to increase the focus on for people to get contractors in to do particular tasks, maybe farm relief and that kind of thing as well, for or maybe reducing changing the milking frequency during the week that people don't do 14 milkings uh per week. And all of that in order to improve the quality of life, because there is a greater focus on that now, and uh also to improve the succession scene because that is becoming an increasing difficulty within the Irish scene. The age profile is increasing, and many farmers do not have a successor even named, you know.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Yeah, or a successor that wants to take on 14 milkings.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

That's right. That's right. And uh but I will say, I mean, going back to the link, I suppose, with uh New Zealand and the farming system here, many young people do come out, maybe after college years, and that they do come out to New Zealand and spend maybe six months or whatever here with a farmer as a placement on a farm here, and they gain excellent experience in that. And it is also part of our um college scene uh as well, as part of the the uh UCD agricultural degree to come to New Zealand as well for a placement.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Okay, thank you. So this conference is about precision technology. Lisa, what technologies do Irish farmers kind of adopt and and what are their drivers? Why are they doing that?

SPEAKER_02 3:58

Uh there was a recent survey done that was run last year. So we have a really interesting annual survey in Ireland called the National Farm Survey, and this is facilitated by National Farm Recorders doing an amazing job with amazing farmers going out and uh sitting around the kitchen table having a cup of tea and uh gathering information. So um I was fortunate enough to submit a couple questions last year and they got accepted, and so they we were actually looking at what technologies are being used, so it was so very fitting. So we looked at 18 different technologies and we said, how many of these are you using on farm currently? So there's some clear front runners, and and two of those are in the cleaning category. So automatic washers on the bulk tank at 86% rate of adoption for our survey, which represented about 12,000 dairy farmers. So if you do a stratified sample, it scales up a bit, and automatic manure scrapers. So they were very highly adopted. Also a feeding technology of automatic in-parlor feeders, a herd management app that we have called herd watch, and also automatic cluster removers. So those were all well over the majority of people adopting.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

A lot of those sound very familiar in the New Zealand context. Are they kind of recent adoptions in Ireland or or have they been around for a while over there too?

SPEAKER_02 5:11

They've been around for a while. There was a similar baseline study done in 2018, and so many of those were also surveyed in 2018. And although we've seen a significant increase across the 10 technologies that were um assessed in 2018 and 2024, there was a nice crossover. All of them were increasing at a significant rate. But I think Bernie may have a different opinion about specific technologies, but those in particular have been around.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

Yeah, certainly. The uh I suppose one that we could select out there would be the um automatic lustre movers. And they certainly have increased uh very significantly in recent times, I think up over up to 50% on farms. And uh that may be due to the fact that herds are getting larger, uh, maybe parters are getting larger, and uh, in order for the milker not to have too much over milking in the herd, uh then the ACR is important there from uh milk quality and obviously a co-welfare uh perspective as well.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

Okay. So you talked about the technologies that are highest on the list. Which ones are kind of emerging?

SPEAKER_02 6:17

Yes, uh, we do have some trends there as well. So automatic forage feeders from the study that we did in 2024 were being adopted at about a 10% rate. Virtual fencing, and milking robots are down at about 2%. So those are very much emerging technologies as well. And Bernie's done a recent trial and study on virtual fencing, and maybe you'll touch on that.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

Yes, uh, yeah. We have currently been doing some research on virtual fencing. The virtual fencing isn't really in place in Ireland at the moment, but we took it on board to do research at the uh Tagus Research Centre on it, and we found that cows adapted to it very well. They generally learnt the system within a couple of days. And uh, we do think that there is potential for it in the Irish scenario, particularly if we can link it with the grassland management. I suppose one thing we noticed was that there can be quite a bit of variation in the learning rate of the cows. On average, as I say, it was very good. They learnt over a couple of days, but there can be cows that do take longer than others, and uh we do need to look into that a little bit further.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

Okay. From the survey, could you tell anything about the types of farmers, the characteristics of farmers that were adopting more technology?

SPEAKER_02 7:28

Yes, we're very fortunate with the Irish National Farm Survey. We have dozens and dozens of social demographic points that we can go look at. So we did some of that. These are preliminary results. But in 2024, from the people that we surveyed, um, not surprisingly, there was a highly significant association with having a larger herd size. So the average herd size in 2024 was 99 cows. The adopter mean herd size was between 124 and 142. So again, very different scale than New Zealand, but for us it was an uptick. So if they had a larger herd size, um, they had a larger farm size, specifically focused on the dairy enterprise, a higher proportion of hired labor. And um, interestingly, kind of a new thing to look at is uh derogation status. So were these farmers in nitrates derogation, which is an environmental regulation in Ireland, and we're seeing all those four characteristics as being highly significantly associated with a technology adoption across the different categories, not even one in particular, but across cleaning, feeding, milking, etc.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

What can you tell us about how farmers are selecting the technologies that they're adopting?

SPEAKER_02 8:31

Yeah, thank you for the question. Another um thing that we asked in the additional survey was about technology benefits. So we asked farmers to focus on a particular technology and we gave them a few choices. And we said, take as many benefits in these different categories, again, sort of animal health, labor, financial, social, environmental. And across the different categories, there were clear winners in animal health and labor. So they were calling out more generally that these are benefits for many different reasons. Environmental across the different chosen technologies that the farmers focused on were quite low. They didn't call out the benefits for environmental reasons. Um, however, there was an exception, and that is this grassland management app called Pasture-based Ireland. And that significantly was called out. If the farmer chose to focus on Pasture-based Ireland, they were saying, putting their hand up and saying, we see great environmental benefits of using this national database and the associated app that goes with it. And Bernie can tell us a little bit more about Pasture-based Ireland.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Pasture-based Ireland is a grassland management decision support tool. It's also a mechanism to capture background data on farms. It has been in place since about 2013. And uh initially the uptake was quite slow, but uh there has been a steady increase in the number of dairy farms now recording grassland measurements, and I suppose that has been helped by extension personnel indicating the importance and farmers realizing the importance of keeping on top of knowing what they have out there for the nutrition of their cow. And uh now there are approximately uh 7,000 farmers using the system. So we're pleased about that, and we're looking to increased functionality in the future with the Pastor Brace Ireland platform as well. I suppose another form of technology that is adopted at a higher rate is uh the wearables. But while they could be considered under the health and welfare title, I suppose, they are mainly used at present from the point of view of heat detection.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

And because again, it's so important for the calving interval, in our case in the seasonal production system.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

Well, thank you, Bernadette and Lisa. We've run out of time, but thank you so much for sharing those Irish perspectives with us. Key message is that despite being on opposite sides of the world, pasture-based dairy farmers face remarkably similar challenges and opportunities with precision dairy. Thank you so much for listening and thank you for coming on, Matewa. Thank you for having us. Thank you. If you'd like to get connected with DairyNZ's latest advice, research, tools, and resources, whether it's reading, scrolling, listening, or in person, you can visit dairynz.co.nz forward slash get-connected, and don't forget to hit follow to keep up to date with our latest episodes. As always, if you have any feedback on this podcast or have some ideas for future topics or guests, please email us at talkingdai at dairynz.co.nz. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time on Talking Dairy.