Paddy Duffin and his wife Joanna farm in Cargan near the beautiful Glens of Antrim. They also get great help from Ryan McCauley who is employed on the farm. They have a high yielding Holstein Friesian herd of 65 cows (c. 9-9,500 litres pa) and replacement stock. They supply Lakeland Dairies and purchase their dairy nuts from Lakeland Agri and feed for young stock from Fane Valley. Cows are milked with a Lely A5 robot and fed in parlour with dairy nuts and using an Abbey VF 1250 diet feeder.
The TMR mix includes grass and whole crop silage. Three cuts of silage are taken from their mainly hill farm and the Duffin family make 1,800 to 2,000 bales each year using their own machinery. In 2024, they harvested whole crop from 12 acres and the crop yield was 109 bales. This is increasing to 21 acres in the current year.
As a milk producer, Paddy knows the importance of making the best quality silage so he began making baled silage four years ago using his own machinery. These include three tractors; a New Holland Tm 155, two Fiat 100/90s, a John Deere mower, a Lely rake and a McHale Fusion 2 integrated baler wrapper. They use a local contractor for tedding.
According to Paddy “when I started baling and wrapping first, I had limited knowledge on the difference in bale wrap quality between the brands on the market. With the poor quality wrap I was getting off the tractor frequently to re-tie because the balewrap kept breaking. During the silage period, we have to move bales across the farm to our storage site and previously we found lots of pin holes in the bales after transporting them. Bales were also easily damaged while stacking and handling them. In addition, when we opened the bales after storage there could be quite a lot of mouldy silage.”
However all that changed after Paddy started buying SilotitePro1800 balewrap from his Fane Valley store in Ballymena.” Now I never have to get off the tractor to re-tie bales. Bales are not damaged after transport or stacking and we haven’t experienced any mouldy silage. The Silotite is packed in a sleeve, so no boxes to sort out. With the longer 1800m rolls, I am saving lots of time as we get around an extra five bales wrapped per reel. Overall, we find the Silotite more puncture resistant and better for protecting our valuable bales during storage and for a longer period of time.
