John-Paul Herlihy

The savings you don’t see on the invoice

John-Paul Herlihy milks over 100 cows in Kilmallock, Co.Limerick. His old system was straightforward: nitrogen on a fixed rotation, straight out with the spreader after each grazing. When input prices started climbing around COVID, he began looking at the Tow and Fert system. That was three years ago, and he’s been spraying ever since.

It was around COVID, let’s say, when the price of inputs started to shoot up. I started to look at the Tow and Fert system. Spraying away ever since. Straight away I saw my grass growth was the same with about 40% less I was putting out.

As he kept an eye on how the grass responded, John-Paul reduced further.

Already I’m down to a 40 if not 50% reduction in my nitrogen. So if we do lose the derogation, I can still grow the same amount of grass with less fertiliser. That’s one problem I don’t have to worry about. When I was on the granular, I was spreading anything between 25, 30 units just to keep it coming all the time, whereas now with the reaction from the Tow and Fert, the grass is coming straight away. I’m anything between 8 and 15 units depending on the time of year. So there’s a big reduction in my urea consumption.

By his second season, he was noticing changes beyond the fertiliser bill.

The second year I noticed my ground was starting to come alive. I noticed some casts in the ground. I was getting a thicker sward. It would tiller better, and it would respond faster when the cows would leave after grazing. The grass quality definitely improved.

John-Paul has also started adding molasses through the tank, to feed the microorganisms in the soil – so the soil changes he describes sit alongside that addition too, not the nitrogen switch on its own.

For John-Paul, the reduced input bill was only ever part of the picture.

There’s a lot more to this machine than just reducing my input costs.