Dairy Farming General

Milked out

Dawggone wrote: »

Banks are taking ye for a ride.
Financed some metal today 1.35% for 5yrs.
Land/property is 1.8% fixed for 10yrs.

BOI are looking for a 3% margin over the 1.5% interest rate, but what can we do no competition worth talking about and those that are there are at similar ****

Deepsouthwest

Dawggone wrote: »

Banks are taking ye for a ride.
Financed some metal today 1.35% for 5yrs.
Land/property is 1.8% fixed for 10yrs.

That is free money, can an irish farmer borrow from a French bank?!!

just do it

Deepsouthwest wrote: »

That is free money, can an irish farmer borrow from a French bank?!!

No. The euro was supposed to bring that but legally seemingly they would find it hard to chase foreign equity and just don't want to go that route. Not for a piddly few 100k anyway

jaymla627

Isn't their a ball of money being made available shortly from the EU at very good rates to help support agriculture, something like 2% intrest our under think aib are the bank that will have access to these funds in ireland

just do it

jaymla627 wrote: »

Isn't their a ball of money being made available shortly from the EU at very good rates to help support agriculture, something like 2% intrest our under think aib are the bank that will have access to these funds in ireland

Yep, worth a look. Cheap money, cheap cows and a building grant. On the look out for a 250ac block of land with a sea view and I'll take the plunge

Dawggone

Milked out wrote: »

BOI are looking for a 3% margin over the 1.5% interest rate, but what can we do no competition worth talking about and those that are there are at similar ****

I can't remember who said on here that the banks are like a jersey bull...sooner or later they will get you!
Regretfully Ireland has become a bankocracy.

stanflt

browned wrote: »

Not in the dairy system they're promoting Horsed out to prove a point I'd say. In saying that the lessons learned from the north and nz suggest that upping numbers on the home block by feeding ration just made fellows busy fools. peob just converted their figures to €

I know of a farm that fed 1.31 ton of meal per cow last year- he had meal cost of just below 5cpl which included Brewers grain
Profit per litre was just shy of 21cpl or 1532 per cow

trixi2011

jaymla627 wrote: »

Isn't their a ball of money being made available shortly from the EU at very good rates to help support agriculture, something like 2% intrest our under think aib are the bank that will have access to these funds in ireland

Have looked into them loans already availible in ni the banks load commision on top to bring it up to 4/4.5 % . Know of farmers paying 2% in the uk on farm purchase and develpment

Markcheese

Deepsouthwest wrote: »

That is free money, can an irish farmer borrow from a French bank?!!

I know a lad in north cork financed his loader about 4 years back, with a German bank -

browned

stanflt wrote: »

I know of a farm that fed 1.31 ton of meal per cow last year- he had meal cost of just below 5cpl which included Brewers grain
Profit per litre was just shy of 21cpl or 1532 per cow

while the figure you quote are very impressive is it an exception or the norm? for example im looking at the profit monitor of a farmer who made a net profit of 4,000 euros/dairy ha last year on less than 0.5ton meal

freedominacup

browned wrote: »

while the figure you quote are very impressive is it an exception or the norm? for example im looking at the profit monitor of a farmer who made a net profit of 4,000 euros/dairy ha last year on less than 0.5ton meal

Point is there's more than one way to skin a cat.

mahoney_j

browned wrote: »

while the figure you quote are very impressive is it an exception or the norm? for example im looking at the profit monitor of a farmer who made a net profit of 4,000 euros/dairy ha last year on less than 0.5ton meal

No offence browned but you seem very dismissive of feeding meal hol fr etc .as freedom said more than one way to skin a cat .meant to reply to your list from yesterday but a lot ofvtegasc info etc is all based on the scale farmer ,low meal use a 5 k ltr average cow and doing 450 kg solids a typical Irish farm needs more than that spin .now and again we get a token gesture walk like Jim delahuntys thrown in but little made of it despite what he has been doing for years ditto when Stan won his award a bit of fuss and paper time then that's it .guys like this at the top of there game going somewhat against thevtegasc/kiwi advice and achieving phenomenal results deserve and warrant more paper space etc.wonder is it that a lot in Tegasc and the likes of jk don't pocess the knowledge or skill set to successfully operate or give advice on high input/output grass based operations........

kowtow

mahoney_j wrote:

Land purchase I think was circa 4.5%

Fixed for how long?

mahoney_j

kowtow wrote: »

Fixed for how long?

No idea as wasn't looking for money for land just a figure they threw at me .compared to rates dwag is getting in France were getting rode

kevthegaff

Im goinb to get lambasted for this!!! All my loans are 5yrs and less, i rent the land off the mother so banks refuse any longer credit unless i go through bank solicitor for land as security, interest rate was cheeper also. 2.3% off loans i inherited but 4.6-5% for loans of late. Do ye think im mad with short but large repayments?? Its always tight on a bad milk price year!!

Deepsouthwest

mahoney_j wrote: »

No offence browned but you seem very dismissive of feeding meal hol fr etc .as freedom said more than one way to skin a cat .meant to reply to your list from yesterday but a lot ofvtegasc info etc is all based on the scale farmer ,low meal use a 5 k ltr average cow and doing 450 kg solids a typical Irish farm needs more than that spin .now and again we get a token gesture walk like Jim delahuntys thrown in but little made of it despite what he has been doing for years ditto when Stan won his award a bit of fuss and paper time then that's it .guys like this at the top of there game going somewhat against thevtegasc/kiwi advice and achieving phenomenal results deserve and warrant more paper space etc.wonder is it that a lot in Tegasc and the likes of jk don't pocess the knowledge or skill set to successfully operate or give advice on high input/output grass based operations........

Grass is Irelands ONLY comparible advantage. Teagasc are not a one trick pony, it's the only trick this country has got. If we want to start talking up the merits of more inputs, then we should start taking the US advisory boards info or Dawg's, they've got the input system down to a T.
Inspite of this, most farmers will feed more meal now that quotas are gone
and we'll end up like Northern Ireland, guaranteed.
Teagasc and JK are swimming against the tide trying to focus people on this, I admire they're perseverence in the face of almost constant criticism.
I hope they don't read boards.ie!!

mahoney_j

kevthegaff wrote: »

Im goinb to get lambasted for this!!! All my loans are 5yrs and less, i rent the land off the mother so banks refuse any longer credit unless i go through bank solicitor for land as security, interest rate was cheeper also. 2.3% off loans i inherited but 4.6-5% for loans of late. Do ye think im mad with short but large repayments?? Its always tight on a bad milk price year!!

Hard to criticise Kev,far play.cash flow could be fairly stretched now with the twins !!!shortvterm for me fot things like car loan ,hire purchase etc for machines but long term for capital ex etc

Milked out

kowtow wrote: »

Fixed for how long?

That's variable, fixing added .5 to 2.5 depending on length of period last time I checked. It's a Bollox. Thing is if fixing it needs to be done before variable start rising and a long enough time frame that you won't be coming out of it at a time when interest rates are still high

Milked out

kevthegaff wrote: »

Im goinb to get lambasted for this!!! All my loans are 5yrs and less, i rent the land off the mother so banks refuse any longer credit unless i go through bank solicitor for land as security, interest rate was cheeper also. 2.3% off loans i inherited but 4.6-5% for loans of late. Do ye think im mad with short but large repayments?? Its always tight on a bad milk price year!!

If you can keep cash flow moving in tight years u can manage, are they anyway flexible with terms that short for a prolonged low price period?

kowtow

I would budget 7% minimum over the life of a 25yr loan at that premium.

jaymla627

Deepsouthwest wrote: »

Grass is Irelands ONLY comparible advantage. Teagasc are not a one trick pony, it's the only trick this country has got. If we want to start talking up the merits of more inputs, then we should start taking the US advisory boards info or Dawg's, they've got the input system down to a T.
Inspite of this, most farmers will feed more meal now that quotas are gone
and we'll end up like Northern Ireland, guaranteed.
Teagasc and JK are swimming against the tide trying to focus people on this, I admire they're perseverence in the face of almost constant criticism.
I hope they don't read boards.ie!!

In alot of cases high meal feeding compensates for crap grass land management would feed strong here to certain cows and times of the year but always pull the plug on high feed rates the minute grass quality and availability is their, at the minute 2.5kg is going in fty with cows averaging 28.5 litres just over two kilos of solids.
Use meal here as a tool to keep yields up during weather events/calving/poor grass quality and then reap the rewards by maintaining a really high flat production curve, that's the key in my opinion to getting good yields grass on its own is to variable to rely on as a sole source of feed you have to know when to put feed in to compensate when it's quality is poor always shake my head when I see lads dropping 2-3 litres over a period of say 10 days when weather turns crap and they refuse to put in feed your canning the cow and badly hitting your yields for the rest of the year

browned

mahoney_j wrote: »

No offence browned but you seem very dismissive of feeding meal hol fr etc .as freedom said more than one way to skin a cat .meant to reply to your list from yesterday but a lot ofvtegasc info etc is all based on the scale farmer ,low meal use a 5 k ltr average cow and doing 450 kg solids a typical Irish farm needs more than that spin .now and again we get a token gesture walk like Jim delahuntys thrown in but little made of it despite what he has been doing for years ditto when Stan won his award a bit of fuss and paper time then that's it .guys like this at the top of there game going somewhat against thevtegasc/kiwi advice and achieving phenomenal results deserve and warrant more paper space etc.wonder is it that a lot in Tegasc and the likes of jk don't pocess the knowledge or skill set to successfully operate or give advice on high input/output grass based operations........

no offence taken mj. while I fully admit being dismissive towards excessive feeding meal where have I posted anything dismissive towards Holsteins? I think they are a fantastic breed of cow (more of a fresian man myself admittedly). they are the dominant breed of milking cow on the planet for good reason given that they are more adaptive to profitable dairying the world round.

may I ask a genuine question, why do you constantly dismissive towards jex on anything other than a scale farm? at the end of the day its not about the volume you supply. profitability is the end goal and to say that jex aren't profitable on a limited land base is equally as dismissive as I am to meal feeding. just saying.


from reading the journal jim delahunty produced 475kgs of milk solids/cow last year. he has a target of 500kgs meal feeding. jim delahunty is a poster boy for this low meal 450kgs ms typical irish farm that you are bemoaning teagasc and jk for promoting. jim delahunty had featured regularly in the journal over the years he spoke at the iga dairy conference in Kilkenny last year.
Robert Shannon is another farmer with an exceptional herd of hf who was regularly promoted by jk and teagasc.
isn't bill o keeffe who writes for the journal has a high yielding bf herd. bryan daniels is regurally promoted by both and has a high ebi bf herd as well.

as to why stan is not promoted in the fj by jack kennedy maybe its to do with him winning an award sponsored by a rival paper? for example I haven't heard a bit about this years winner of the competition

I think its a lazy commentary to suggest that teagasc and jk is only focused on this so called kiwi system. what interests both are high profit farms and farmers.

browned

jaymla627 wrote: »

In alot of cases high meal feeding compensates for crap grass land management would feed strong here to certain cows and times of the year but always pull the plug on high feed rates the minute grass quality and availability is their, at the minute 2.5kg is going in fty with cows averaging 28.5 litres just over two kilos of solids.
Use meal here as a tool to keep yields up during weather events/calving/poor grass quality and then reap the rewards by maintaining a really high flat production curve, that's the key in my opinion to getting good yields grass on its own is to variable to rely on as a sole source of feed you have to know when to put feed in to compensate when it's quality is poor always shake my head when I see lads dropping 2-3 litres over a period of say 10 days when weather turns crap and they refuse to put in feed your canning the cow and badly hitting your yields for the rest of the year

I completely agree with you here jay. where grass quality isn't up to scratch in terms of energy an additional source should be given i.e meal. I think this is where a lot of the ill feeling towards jk and teagasc has come from. most of their advice is predicated on the feeding of quality grass and a lot of poor grass managers have read their advice and assumed it was directed towards them and when it backfires due to poor grass quality the blame is laid on those who put forward the advice.

browned

From memory jack Kennedy chaired the session at the Iga conference that Jim delehunty spoke at. The other speaker was shane chambers who spoke about his crossbred herd.

mahoney_j

browned wrote: »

no offence taken mj. while I fully admit being dismissive towards excessive feeding meal where have I posted anything dismissive towards Holsteins? I think they are a fantastic breed of cow (more of a fresian man myself admittedly). they are the dominant breed of milking cow on the planet for good reason given that they are more adaptive to profitable dairying the world round.

may I ask a genuine question, why do you constantly dismissive towards jex on anything other than a scale farm? at the end of the day its not about the volume you supply. profitability is the end goal and to say that jex aren't profitable on a limited land base is equally as dismissive as I am to meal feeding. just saying.


from reading the journal jim delahunty produced 475kgs of milk solids/cow last year. he has a target of 500kgs meal feeding. jim delahunty is a poster boy for this low meal 450kgs ms typical irish farm that you are bemoaning teagasc and jk for promoting. jim delahunty had featured regularly in the journal over the years he spoke at the iga dairy conference in Kilkenny last year.
Robert Shannon is another farmer with an exceptional herd of hf who was regularly promoted by jk and teagasc.
isn't bill o keeffe who writes for the journal has a high yielding bf herd. bryan daniels is regurally promoted by both and has a high ebi bf herd as well.

as to why stan is not promoted in the fj by jack kennedy maybe its to do with him winning an award sponsored by a rival paper? for example I haven't heard a bit about this years winner of the competition

I think its a lazy commentary to suggest that teagasc and jk is only focused on this so called kiwi system. what interests both are high profit farms and farmers.

Why I dismiss a jex on anything other than a scale farm is simple a well bred high ebi fr will out perform it..a jex is a super Ainmal ,but a typical 4500/5500 ltr 450kg solids 500 kg meal jex cow compared to a say 7500 ltr 550 kg inplus solids on 1/1.1 tonne meal fr on a 50/100 cow herd will leave much different levels of profit ,Stan prime example .theres also the higher cull cow value and bull calf that a jex won't give ,there relevant on small farm and some on larger farms regard them as a bi product or beer money .jex would be profitable on small farm but hol fr or fr a lot more
Also not lazy commentsry to suggest what I said re jk or a lot of Tegasc advice,yes its profit based as it should be but nearly always heavily kiwi based or jex cow based ,heavy meal feeding frowned upon .going back to board at moorepark suggesting that feeding over 1 tonne of meal leaves a 250 negative ,bull**** statement and they couldn't even back it up.iv heard it said many times a lot of Tegasc advisors don't pocess the skillset to give good advice to a typical small scale Irish based dairy farm where more milk volume is needed but not at expense of solids or fertility and heavier meal feeding is required .youbstart getting allot of wishy washy answers

browned

mahoney_j wrote: »

Why I dismiss a jex on anything other than a scale farm is simple a well bred high ebi fr will out perform it..a jex is a super Ainmal ,but a typical 4500/5500 ltr 450kg solids 500 kg meal jex cow compared to a say 7500 ltr 550 kg inplus solids on 1/1.1 tonne meal fr on a 50/100 cow herd will leave much different levels of profit ,Stan prime example .theres also the higher cull cow value and bull calf that a jex won't give ,there relevant on small farm and some on larger farms regard them as a bi product or beer money .jex would be profitable on small farm but hol fr or fr a lot more
Also not lazy commentsry to suggest what I said re jk or a lot of Tegasc advice,yes its profit based as it should be but nearly always heavily kiwi based or jex cow based ,heavy meal feeding frowned upon .going back to board at moorepark suggesting that feeding over 1 tonne of meal leaves a 250 negative ,bull**** statement and they couldn't even back it up.iv heard it said many times a lot of Tegasc advisors don't pocess the skillset to give good advice to a typical small scale Irish based dairy farm where more milk volume is needed but not at expense of solids or fertility and heavier meal feeding is required .youbstart getting allot of wishy washy answers

Bit late and heading to bed here but aren't all trials conducted with herds of jex and HF? The next generation herd is completely HF. It's comparing an elite herd of high ebi HF 249ebi with the national average on a grass based system. Nothing kiwi about this experiment. Your always forgetting the fact that HF have been trialled almost exclusively from the 70's up till the late 90's. Factor in that there are countless HF trials being conducted around the world. If there is a bias towards using the jex it is probably because it is a relatively new breed to the dairy scene in Ireland with little information on how they will preform in Irish conditions. The only true bias in teagasc is towards high ebi dairy stock.

On the limited block, your still comparing output and not the profit. Saying HF have high cull/calf prices and well as volume is nothing new.how does it equate to higher profit. Stan is an exceptional operator. I think it's unfair to use him as an example for the average farmer. The farm I quoted leaving €4000/ha net profit on effective dairy ground would leave an equally high return from a small block as Stan's would (apols Stan don't know your figures off hand). So the moral of my story is any system operated to a high standard should leave a high profit no matter the scale. The question is which system will leave the most profit to the average farmer? The non top 10% of operators

browned

I suppose the simple question is what sort of net profit/ effective dairy ha doesn't a farm under 40ha require. the mp blueprint for a 40ha farm is targeting €2,000+ /ha

mahoney_j

browned wrote: »

Bit late and heading to bed here but aren't all trials conducted with herds of jex and HF? The next generation herd is completely HF. It's comparing an elite herd of high ebi HF 249ebi with the national average on a grass based system. Nothing kiwi about this experiment. Your always forgetting the fact that HF have been trialled almost exclusively from the 70's up till the late 90's. Factor in that there are countless HF trials being conducted around the world. If there is a bias towards using the jex it is probably because it is a relatively new breed to the dairy scene in Ireland with little information on how they will preform in Irish conditions. The only true bias in teagasc is towards high ebi dairy stock.

On the limited block, your still comparing output and not the profit. Saying HF have high cull/calf prices and well as volume is nothing new.how does it equate to higher profit. Stan is an exceptional operator. I think it's unfair to use him as an example for the average farmer. The farm I quoted leaving €4000/ha net profit on effective dairy ground would leave an equally high return from a small block as Stan's would (apols Stan don't know your figures off hand). So the moral of my story is any system operated to a high standard should leave a high profit no matter the scale. The question is which system will leave the most profit to the average farmer? The non top 10% of operators

Right 2 100 cow herds ,one typical x bred herd doing 500000 Ltrs second traditional 7500000 ltr hol fr .say 12 cent margin on xbred herd and10 cent on fr herd your making good points in fairness but do u work for Tegasc or God forbid are u jk!!

browned

mahoney_j wrote: »

Right 2 100 cow herds ,one typical x bred herd doing 500000 Ltrs second traditional 7500000 ltr hol fr .say 12 cent margin on xbred herd and10 cent on fr herd your making good points in fairness but do u work for Tegasc or God forbid are u jk!!

Fully commercial farmer here. In the scenario you suggested about you would have a comparable take home income with the HF herd stocked at 2.5 and the jex stocked at 3.75. If you wanted a true comparison one would really have to average a return over a 3 year milk boom bust cycle, factoring in a low ration high milk price and a high meal low milk year to highlight the strengths of both systems. A lot of work admittedly.

On top of this an initial start up cost would need to be factored in. The hidden beauty of herds like Stan is they aren't created overnight realistically. Years of selective breeding is needed. To put it fairly crudely. Accidentally put a je straw in a good fr/HF and bang you've a Jex. Herd. You'd have to factor in costs for facilities as well. The herd you describe would surely need in parlour feeders, milk meters acrs( forgive me if this is stereotyping) while a jex only needs a cluster and vacuum. Throw in a cost for facilities. Know plenty of jex men out wintering where as I'd imagine it wouldn't be as favourable an option for a 750,000 herd. For me these are the opposite argument to the calf/cull price.

I haven't the report on me to link but there has been trial done in the north comparing jex and HF in a high input/high output system and the jex was equal in take home profit to the HF (I think) due to her higher fertility and a not too disrespect-able Ms yield. From memory the jex was actually more profitable in the system but I'm not making that statement as I've nothing to back it up as of now. Also the fertility merit of the HF used is not known to me either.

frazzledhome

browned wrote: »

Fully commercial farmer here. In the scenario you suggested about you would have a comparable take home income with the HF herd stocked at 2.5 and the jex stocked at 3.75. If you wanted a true comparison one would really have to average a return over a 3 year milk boom bust cycle, factoring in a low ration high milk price and a high meal low milk year to highlight the strengths of both systems. A lot of work admittedly.

This is a well worn path

Teag/JK bad
Kiwi Shocking