Co. Clare natives, Edel and Dominic Curtin, featured on episode one of season four of Agriland's 'The Dairy Trail' podcast earlier this week.

Edel and Dominic are milking 40 cows just outside the village of Kilmihil alongside their three children, Kathleen, Isobel, and Dominic.

With both Edel and Dominic active members of An Garda Síochána, there is no downtime for the Curtins, as they balance shift work and the dairy herd in harmony.

The Curtins are operating a spring calving season, with British Friesians making up the majority of the herd. However, they have recently integrated a couple of Montbéliardes into the herd too.

The herd is milked through a six unit herringbone parlour, with milking duties typically handed to Dominic and his father Pat.

The family farm sells approximately 20 calves each season, keeping a further 20 for replacements and beef rearing, with 20-30 head fattened and finished on the farm each year.

Dominic tells us about the struggles of spring grazing during the poor weather conditions this year.

Considering the heavy soil type in west Co. Clare, the herd had not yet seen grass at the time of the recording, but thankfully cows have since got to pasture following this week's good weather.

The farm will still be following damage control measures such as strip grazing, but hoping to stay out full-time now to get through grass.

Dominic noted how the lack of grass in the diet is not doing any favours for milk solids, and he is in a situation where 6-8kg of concentrates is being fed just to maintain production and body condition.

Dominic also speaks about the upcoming breeding season and the criteria he has in place.

He mentioned how this is the first year where he moved the calving start date away from February 1, which worked well considering the weather.

He is using a mix of conventional artificial insemination (AI) and sexed semen, and lets an Angus stock bull run with maiden heifers.

Edel spoke about managing the farm alongside their shift work, stating that milking begins at 6:00a.m.

However, as if they were not busy enough, Edel also takes part in ploughing competitions with her trustworthy Massey Ferguson 240, competing for her home county of Tipperary.

The farm also has horses, ducks, and goslings on hand too.

Edel and Dominic are also big advocates of farm safety, and living along a busy road which splits their farm in half, they recently invested in an underpass.

Edel takes us through the process involved in closing the road and constructing the underpass, which only required five days of road closure.

Make sure to listen to the podcast to hear about the whole farm system, as well as the full process of constructing an underpass.

If you have already listened to the Curtin's podcast, you can tune in to episode two of 'The Dairy Trail' tomorrow (Monday, April 27) at 5:00p.m.

Episode two, which will be hosted here on Agriland and across all other platforms, will feature Co. Offaly dairy farmer, Michael Guinan, who will be speaking about his automated milking operation.