Finian Magner is milking 90 spring calving cows with his family outside Castletownroche, Co. Cork, retaining his own replacements and selling all the beef calves.

Finian made the switch to FarmOps ahead of the breeding season last year, “I found that there was more in the FarmOps app for a dairy farmer, it was priced better, and there were absolutely no pain points when I switched over, it was very straight forward, very simple!” On the day Finian made the switch, Patrick Shanahan from Munster Bovine called out to the farm and signed him up, “all we needed was Finian’s mobile number and his ICBF logins, it’s as simple as that!” said Patrick.

Finian records all of his inseminations in the FarmOps app, “I only needed to put the bulls in once and they come up every time, it’s very easy!” Entering serves gives you expected calving dates ensuring that you can dry off at the right time and you are able to plan your calving season. Finian uses sexed semen for his replacement dairy heifers with a mix of Belgium Blue, Hereford and Angus straws for the remainder of the breeding season. The use of sexed semen has allowed Finian to add more value to his calf crop with the added beef calves. 

Finian recorded all of his calf registrations and movements through the FarmOps app this Spring, “I’m more organised this year than I ever was, when I go moving calves I would have had to come back to the house and do the movements on the computer. This is no bother, once you have the herd number of where they’re going, it’s simple, you can do it there and then!”

Finian also uses the FarmOps app to record all of his medicines, “I like that you have all the withdrawals there, it tells you them straight away, that’s what makes it so simple!”

Finian previously used a computer for all of his farm paperwork. Patrick asked him if he missed the desktop, “No, no, not at all! I prefer to have it all there on the phone now” laughed Finian. “I would recommend FarmOps to any dairy farmer. You could be below on the farm and if you need to find out anything about a particular cow, you can open the app and it’s right there, it has everything you need!”