Solohead OPEN DAY

zetorman

What did ye think ???

Sam Kade

Was that a drainage demo?

zetorman

Yes. A wet dairy farm ??? Compared to my swamp this farm was really dry. Rained all day and ruined the event. plenty information given out.

tanko

Did they talk about suitable suckler cow types for wet/heavy land. I'd be interested to hear what type and breed of cow they recomended.

whelan1

our discussion group headed down for an overnight stay and where going to visit some farms today, i am on mammy duty so couldnt go, must find out what they thought

5live

zetorman wrote: »

What did ye think ???

It will be interesting to see the results of the moledraining trial. Surprising that no research done up to now on waterflow through soils not to mind improving it. The one figure that caught my eye was that out of 1.1m of rainfall per year there only 300 mm or so was evaporated, the rest has to flow across the land or down through it.

They sure picked a good day to get the message of drainage across:rolleyes:

reilig

http://www.teagasc.ie/publications/2012/1334/Solohead_Open_Day_2012.pdf

blue5000

tanko wrote: »

Did they talk about suitable suckler cow types for wet/heavy land. I'd be interested to hear what type and breed of cow they recomended.

More of a dairy day than Su cow day. What I did get out of it though was that su cows and cattle would probably benefit from fluke dose this summer, especially on wet land.

Dairy farmers are more restricted in what they can use for fluke, AFAIK zanil only kills mature fluke, so dairy farmers would want to be dosing cows twice this winter.

On the cow side, there was no advantage soil damage wise with lighter jersey cows. But this year might show a difference.

Tim Gleeson on the drainage stand was very good I thought.

whelan1

was talking to one of the lads from our group that went to the open day, his farm is wet as mine... said it was so wet he couldnt take it all in was delighted to get to hotel in limerick after it, was soaked through...

5live

blue5000 wrote: »

More of a dairy day than Su cow day. What I did get out of it though was that su cows and cattle would probably benefit from fluke dose this summer, especially on wet land.

Dairy farmers are more restricted in what they can use for fluke, AFAIK zanil only kills mature fluke, so dairy farmers would want to be dosing cows twice this winter.

On the cow side, there was no advantage soil damage wise with lighter jersey cows. But this year might show a difference.

Tim Gleeson on the drainage stand was very good I thought.

I was talking to one of the lads on that after. I asked was it because they both caused the same damage or were they more conscious that the HO would cause more damage so they took them off sooner. He was humming and hawing for a while and eventually said there might be a fair bit of the bigger animals going in sooner

st1979

Well for anyone that was there what did the drained fields seem like in comparison to non drained. Could you see significant benefit

just do it

Relevant to this post but not from Solohead open day - A knowledgeable lad I know was telling me that the NZ experience shows severe poaching is caused by time stock are in paddocks i.e. paddocks recover much quicker if they are heavily stocked for short grazing periods than lightly stocked for longer periods. Makes since I suppose and another reason the paddock system is better.