Making farming easier and more enjoyable through labour efficiencies

Labour Specialist Martina Gormley joined Emma-Louise Coffey on this week’s Dairy Edge podcast with insights into labour measures and efficiencies on six dairy farms across the spring and summer months of 2020. Martina checked in with the six farmers weekly to account for the hours worked; 57 hours in spring and 50 hours in summer. The common trends across the six farms that offer labour efficiency include the number of rows milked (milking infrastructure), compact calving, number of groups of stock and use of the contractor. Martina recommends, for any farmer who would like to assess their own labour efficiency, they should consider measuring the labour each week for a year. From this you can see where you are spending time and identify inefficiencies. Martina also explains that labour input on farms should be like the steps of a stairs, busiest in the spring and summer and least busy into the autumn and winter. For more information: https://www.teagasc.ie/animals/dairy/labour/labour-efficiency-focus-farms/ For more episodes from the Dairy Edge podcast visit the show page at: https://www.teagasc.ie/animals/dairy/the-dairy-edge-podcast/