what changes will you make with a lower milk price?

whelan2

next 6 months look like being tough milk price wise , so whats your plan to deal with it? I suppose we were lucky the price wasnt too bad for the first 6 months

kevthegaff

Keep grass growing, no immediate investment in farm, milk later if price dictates

howdee

Gonna let the ould lad go 😂

frazzledhome

kevthegaff wrote: »

Keep grass growing, no immediate investment in farm, milk later if price dictates

Changing nothing. Heavy lifting done at this stage. Kgs sold well up but margin lower. Not much more can be done here. Price 35c/l to date, shouldn't change too much for rest of year as solids will rise and winter bonus will kick in.

Zero tolerance for passengers

dzer2

would a drop in production rise the price

Buford T. Justice XIX

dzer2 wrote: »

would a drop in production rise the price

The talk at the minute is prices not rising till the new year. And no talk as of yet as to how low they are going to go.

Timmaay

dzer2 wrote: »

would a drop in production rise the price

Not in Ireland. What we knock out is a drop in the ocean. The low cost producers here can afford to drive on, and wait for the higher cost lads to fail, the main thing is be ready for the next price increase.

mahoney_j

frazzledhome wrote: »

Changing nothing. Heavy lifting done at this stage. Kgs sold well up but margin lower. Not much more can be done here. Price 35c/l to date, shouldn't change too much for rest of year as solids will rise and winter bonus will kick in.

Zero tolerance for passengers

Ditto here,bills are well under control now which is a huge help.investement in cubicles etc has been planned and is needed and just ready to start do I'm ploughing on.heifers all in calf,I more week breeding with cows left and things seem to be going very well so lots of stock coming through .have some cattle left to sell also which should come into nice money as beef men are loosing the rag in Marts.hopefully come next April/may price will be on way to recovery

Brown Podzol

Fixed costs which can be half of all costs are largely incurred now.
Here absence of quotas means that we can push production with longer lactations having quality maize silage left over from last year, subsidised by the tax man, and good value pitted sugar beet. Will dilute those fixed costs and maintain a positive cash flow. No discretionary spending, repair rather than replace.

trixi2011

hopfully we wont drop much further but we have had our drop a lot earlier than Ireland price have dropped from 36p to 21.5 in the last 6 months we made a good few cutbacks and capital expenditure is on hold for the time been. some of the things we have done to date are renegotiated rents (con acre) and contract rearing fees, stopped milk recording, reduced use of expensive drugs ,dropped samonela and lepto vaccines, reduced meal feeding to milking cows, dropped ai on heifers, reduced the amount of relief staff hours by rostering days off differently, renegotiated contracting charges. weaned calves at lighter weights which drastically reduced the amount of milk replacer used.

orm0nd

no change

always farmed with the policy of making money & not pushing to fill bulk tank at any cost

frazzledhome

trixi2011 wrote: »

hopfully we wont drop much further but we have had our drop a lot earlier than Ireland price have dropped from 36p to 21.5 in the last 6 months we made a good few cutbacks and capital expenditure is on hold for the time been. some of the things we have done to date are renegotiated rents (con acre) and contract rearing fees, stopped milk recording, reduced use of expensive drugs ,dropped samonela and lepto vaccines, reduced meal feeding to milking cows, dropped ai on heifers, reduced the amount of relief staff hours by rostering days off differently, renegotiated contracting charges. weaned calves at lighter weights which drastically reduced the amount of milk replacer used.

Are the likes of lower weaning weights and dropping vaccines false economy?

Interested in thought process

trixi2011

frazzledhome wrote: »

Are the likes of lower weaning weights and dropping vaccines false economy?

Interested in thought process

the vaccines were advised by the vets and seems of worked out ok so far but Id say we will vaccinate for salmonella next year just to risky not 2. on the weaning weights I think it may actually work in our favour historically calves had been pushed heavily on milk replacer and allways went back a bit at weaning , calves were weaned by age rather than weight came off milk and were on add lib meal till turn out results seem very positive so far.

mahoney_j

trixi2011 wrote: »

hopfully we wont drop much further but we have had our drop a lot earlier than Ireland price have dropped from 36p to 21.5 in the last 6 months we made a good few cutbacks and capital expenditure is on hold for the time been. some of the things we have done to date are renegotiated rents (con acre) and contract rearing fees, stopped milk recording, reduced use of expensive drugs ,dropped samonela and lepto vaccines, reduced meal feeding to milking cows, dropped ai on heifers, reduced the amount of relief staff hours by rostering days off differently, renegotiated contracting charges. weaned calves at lighter weights which drastically reduced the amount of milk replacer used.

All for cutting cloth but some fairly drastic steps there which could lead to much bigger problems down road,dropping lepto and salmonella vaccines could be a very expensive exercise and weaning calves at lighter weights will in all likelihood leave heifers not hitting target weights and lasting in herd .tough times I know

trixi2011

mahoney_j wrote: »

All for cutting cloth but some fairly drastic steps there which could lead to much bigger problems down road,dropping lepto and salmonella vaccines could be a very expensive exercise and weaning calves at lighter weights will in all likelihood leave heifers not hitting target weights and lasting in herd .tough times I know

I agree with you on the vaccines defiantly risky. the calves are above target weight at the moment so touch wood they will keep going that way.At the time we decided on all the cuts there was a lot of talk of our milk company introducing a and b processing quotas which would of resulted in some of our milk only receiving spot price.

frazzledhome

trixi2011 wrote: »

I agree with you on the vaccines defiantly risky. the calves are above target weight at the moment so touch wood they will keep going that way.At the time we decided on all the cuts there was a lot of talk of our milk company introducing a and b processing quotas which would of resulted in some of our milk only receiving spot price.

FOOK

keep going

as usual with my perfect timing I take on more milking ground facing into a price trough,everything is going to have be" make do" until we get out of it.the simple answer is il do whatever it takes to keep going ,anything that can generate cash will be sold and just close the cheque book.the biggest implication I see is workload is going to have to be pushed to get through it as things wont be 100%.im lucky though I have a good bit done the last few years so maybe im swopping farm work for building work which I used to do a lot of myself.iwas thinking id tidy up a few stone walls around the place as its a great way of keeping work to yourself cheap

Sam Kade

Add water

Buford T. Justice XIX

Sam Kade wrote: »

Add water

I'll stay away from Holsteins, thanks;)

Sacrolyte

Sam Kade wrote: »

Add water

There was only one year where that paid off.