Media & Events
KEENAN Approved Brings Labour Savings and Performance Increase for Waterford Dairy Farm
Brothers Gordon and Don Gray, together with their father, run a spring calving dairy herd of 165 cows in Bunmahon, Co. Waterford. For the last 19 years they had been feeding their herd with a KEENAN Klassik 140. “It has lasted us a good while and has not owed us anything at this stage,” says Gordon about their resilient KEENAN mixer wagon. Due to rising cow numbers in 2017, they decided to upscale to a bigger capacity machine and acquired a KEENAN Approved MechFiber360 at the 2017 KEENAN open day sale at the factory in Borris, Co. Carlow.
“We can feed more cows at the same time now which greatly reduces labour for us”, Gordon explains. Another reason Gordon prefers using a KEENAN mixer wagon is that it allows him to incorporate their home grown pinched grain into the TMR rations for their beef cattle.
With the KEENAN Approved mixer wagon, they also began using the InTouch nutritional service. The Gray family is working with Mark Moloney, the InTouch Southeast feeding specialist. Mark has formulated different diets for the Gray’s such as full indoor diet for bad weather, a grazing diet and a dry cow and a beef fattening diet. “We can change diets straight away when the weather gets bad to suit our requirement through the InTouch service. The KEENAN cloud accessible weighbox is handy, no rooting in books for previous diets, you have everything at the touch of a button,” Gordon explains. “We can keep our diets from one end of the year to the next”.
Gordon enjoys the possibility of going online at any time to see the performance of his herd. “If, – for example, my protein is down, the InTouch nutritionists can find out the cause and get yields up again.”
Another advantage for Gordon is the stability of the diet he is able to achieve with InTouch and his KEENAN Approved. “It is handy that any person on the farm can fill the KEENAN with the easy to follow instructions from the KEENAN weighbox and cattle are getting the same ration every day.”
Gordon concluded that he is, “very happy with the KEENAN Approved, it is doing exactly what it’s meant to do on our farm and nothing is to fault.”
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