The elephant cow

kerry cow

I read a article in agri land where Mr jumping up and down about how the world is set against the pedigree holsteins and their massive out put in litres .His cow is 2 to 1 out put against the college or teagasc cow and looks forward to the nitrates curbing the little cows growth in numbers . Maybe the powers that be should decide to dish out to Mr x a double emissions figure to his big high 2 to 1 cow .maybe he should relise that his beauty eats twice as much feed and pushes out twice as much wind and muck as the little moo moo.
From a emissions piont of view you can't compare a elephant to 500 kg cow producing 5000lt.

Dwag

kerry cow wrote: »

I read a article in agri land where Mr jumping up and down about how the world is set against the pedigree holsteins and their massive out put in litres .His cow is 2 to 1 out put against the college or teagasc cow and looks forward to the nitrates curbing the little cows growth in numbers . Maybe the powers that be should decide to dish out to Mr x a double emissions figure to his big high 2 to 1 cow .maybe he should relise that his beauty eats twice as much feed and pushes out twice as much wind and muck as the little moo moo.
From a emissions piont of view you can't compare a elephant to 500 kg cow producing 5000lt.

Brussels doesn't see it that way either. I know of a herd of Angus that were dispersed in the north of France and replaced by Charolais because of nitrates...

davidk1394

kerry cow wrote: »

I read a article in agri land where Mr jumping up and down about how the world is set against the pedigree holsteins and their massive out put in litres .His cow is 2 to 1 out put against the college or teagasc cow and looks forward to the nitrates curbing the little cows growth in numbers . Maybe the powers that be should decide to dish out to Mr x a double emissions figure to his big high 2 to 1 cow .maybe he should relise that his beauty eats twice as much feed and pushes out twice as much wind and muck as the little moo moo.
From a emissions piont of view you can't compare a elephant to 500 kg cow producing 5000lt.

But it still pushes out twice as much milk. So it will take 100 crossbred cows to milk the same as 50 pure breds.

patsy_mccabe

Smaller cows give extended grazing so less carbon emmisions via less diesel for slurry, silage feeding, cutting. This was the whole point of the Carbon Navigator the Teagasc guy told me.

Dwag

patsy_mccabe wrote: »

Smaller cows give extended grazing so less carbon emmisions via less diesel for slurry, silage feeding, cutting. This was the whole point of the Carbon Navigator the Teagasc guy told me.

Hmmm....that hypothesis would stand a little better on bog, but it falls down on good land.

J.O. Farmer

Dwag wrote: »

Hmmm....that hypothesis would stand a little better on bog, but it falls down on good land.

I think it still holds unless your land is so good that you graze cows 12 months of the year with no need for winter feed.

Once you house the cows the theory is the same regardless of the land if the only variable is the cows. The carbon emissions per cow per day will be higher if you have bigger cows.

Dwag

J.O. Farmer wrote: »

I think it still holds unless your land is so good that you graze cows 12 months of the year with no need for winter feed.

Once you house the cows the theory is the same regardless of the land if the only variable is the cows. The carbon emissions per cow per day will be higher if you have bigger cows.

Is Ireland not divided into different zones for winter storage and slurry spreading dates? The system is already set up as regards land type and winter rainfall. Trying to manipulate that system to justify a smaller less productive cow won't wash with Brussels.
Imho.

J.O. Farmer

Dwag wrote: »

Is Ireland not divided into different zones for winter storage and slurry spreading dates? The system is already set up as regards land type and winter rainfall. Trying to manipulate that system to justify a smaller less productive cow won't wash with Brussels.
Imho.

I think you missed the point of my post which was that patsys hypothesis holds up regardless of land type.
Your correct in the rest of your analysis.
The fact is that west of the Shannon we get more rain than the east coast regardless of cow type.
The other fact is that in Brussels they've seen 1 cow they've seen them all. I wouldn't bother trying to convince them otherwise.

kowtow

If those bast##d eurocrats come round here checking on cow size I'll just move them to a paddock further away.

J.O. Farmer

kowtow wrote: »

If those bast##d eurocrats come round here checking on cow size I'll just move them to a paddock further away.

https://youtu.be/OXypyrutq_M

White Clover

patsy_mccabe wrote: »

Smaller cows give extended grazing so less carbon emmisions via less diesel for slurry, silage feeding, cutting. This was the whole point of the Carbon Navigator the Teagasc guy told me.

What other type of cow did you expect the teagasc guy to advocate? Twas hardly Holsteins anyway...

charolais0153

I'm just going to say that let's say a Holstein eats 20kgs DM ,a jersey 17kgdm and a ¾ bred limousine cow 750kgs eats 16kgs dm and a pb Angus eats 14kgs DM. So a cross between a Holstein and an Angus would eat 17kgs DM.....more than the limo so thus rules out the myth about big cows eating more. Please tell me how wrong iam though

blue5000

kerry cow wrote: »

I read a article in agri land where Mr jumping up and down about how the world is set against the pedigree holsteins and their massive out put in litres .His cow is 2 to 1 out put against the college or teagasc cow and looks forward to the nitrates curbing the little cows growth in numbers . Maybe the powers that be should decide to dish out to Mr x a double emissions figure to his big high 2 to 1 cow .maybe he should relise that his beauty eats twice as much feed and pushes out twice as much wind and muck as the little moo moo.
From a emissions piont of view you can't compare a elephant to 500 kg cow producing 5000lt.

Have you a link to the article? Mr Jumping up and down might be in for a shock when the actual emissions from his big cows are actually measured accurately.

mf240

Going to be force to use Belgian blue straws on big cows to reduce emissions. "Add blue"

charolais0153

blue5000 wrote: »

Have you a link to the article? Mr Jumping up and down might be in for a shock when the actual emissions from his big cows are actually measured accurately.

http://www.agriland.ie/farming-news/brainwash-top-dairy-breeder-blasts-teagasc/

Mooooo

mf240 wrote: »

Going to be force to use Belgian blue straws on big cows to reduce emissions. "Add blue"

Lol

freedominacup

charolais0153 wrote: »

http://www.agriland.ie/farming-news/brainwash-top-dairy-breeder-blasts-teagasc/

That is just a poor article. He got to have his say but there's as many holes in his arguments as there are in the teagasc line. We had a dg meeting here yesterday. First one this year where icbf co-op report and pm were not a prominent part if the discussion.We're running pedigree ho cows on medium inputs but I don't think our figures suit the teagasc narrative.

Sam Kade

Agriland is no better than the sun newspaper, they'll print any type of gibberish.

yewtree

Sam Kade wrote: »

Agriland is no better than the sun newspaper, they'll print any type of gibberish.

they print some amount of nonsense about a lot of different things, there main focus seems to be to generate a lot of content for click bait. A lot of their articles are also sponsored so you are effectively reading a press release.

kerry cow

Someone always has a agenda . Life is politics .there's no room for been nice In this world .took me 25 yrs to figure that out . All is fair in love and war .

davidk1394

Sam Kade wrote: »

Agriland is no better than the sun newspaper, they'll print any type of gibberish.

You should have a look at that's farming website. Their even worse again. As the saying goes paper never refused ink

patsy_mccabe

That really hits me every now and then when I'm reading the Journal. What they're saying doesn't make sense. I look at the top of the page then and it says advertisement. Annoys me when guys criticize Teagasc so much. They may not be right all the time but at least their advice is impartial.

kerry cow

At the end of the day we don't need to carry out large experiments on our farms .teagasc have it all done .And on the cow teagasc have done the elephant cow and it's doesn't stack .that's why we are where we are .
What keeps these high breds afloat is the stock sales .but victims are getting scarcer. With out high value stock sales they don't add up .
Or else teagasc are leading us all down the garden path to tip us into a deep black hole .

pedigree 6

kerry cow wrote: »

At the end of the day we don't need to carry out large experiments on our farms .teagasc have it all done .And on the cow teagasc have done the elephant cow and it's doesn't stack .that's why we are where we are .
What keeps these high breds afloat is the stock sales .but victims are getting scarcer. With out high value stock sales they don't add up .
Or else teagasc are leading us all down the garden path to tip us into a deep black hole .

Have to agree.
The only reason Phil said something is that it's effecting stock sales here.
The only reason it's on Agriland is to be controversial.
Pedigree Holstein breeders used to be held up on pedestal and be the who to follow farmers.
But they were getting their ideas from America and this led to 365 + calving interval cows, big silage pits for maize, milking all year round and narrow tall cows.

I used to buy heifer calves for breeding but the only farmers selling calves were the all year round pedigree breeders.
I'm spring calving and religiously stick to this and these cows just didn't last.
I wouldn't say they were underfed or anything but fertility just let them down.
So then I started ai on the cows with the ebi type as they were coming out at the time and fertility improved in these coming stock and just lasted a lot longer in the herd. Now I wanted to try and tighten up the calving interval even more so decided to buy a hol/fr bull.
But the only guys selling breeding dairy bulls around here were either Holstein (had enough of them) or British friesain (not enough milk) so I had to go looking for a dairy bull off fellow spring breeders with the ebi stock. Now these guys never sold breeding bulls before so I bought them as calves and get them registered and genomically tested and that's what I'm doing now for the last good few years now and haven't looked back and am just starting to get the herd the way I want.
But the solids are slowly creeping up and it would be faster with ai. So I'm hampered that way. But it's not too bad.

Bass Reeves

pedigree 6 wrote: »

Have to agree.
The only reason Phil said something is that it's effecting stock sales here.
The only reason it's on Agriland is to be controversial.
Pedigree Holstein breeders used to be held up on pedestal and be the who to follow farmers.
But they were getting their ideas from America and this led to 365 + calving interval cows, big silage pits for maize, milking all year round and narrow tall cows.

I used to buy heifer calves for breeding but the only farmers selling calves were the all year round pedigree breeders.
I'm spring calving and religiously stick to this and these cows just didn't last.
I wouldn't say they were underfed or anything but fertility just let them down.
So then I started ai on the cows with the ebi type as they were coming out at the time and fertility improved in these coming stock and just lasted a lot longer in the herd. Now I wanted to try and tighten up the calving interval even more so decided to buy a hol/fr bull.
But the only guys selling breeding dairy bulls around here were either Holstein (had enough of them) or British friesain (not enough milk) so I had to go looking for a dairy bull off fellow spring breeders with the ebi stock. Now these guys never sold breeding bulls before so I bought them as calves and get them registered and genomically tested and that's what I'm doing now for the last good few years now and haven't looked back and am just starting to get the herd the way I want.
But the solids are slowly creeping up and it would be faster with ai. So I'm hampered that way. But it's not too bad.

As a lad that buys a good few Friesian bullocks I have began to notice over the last 2 years that the quality of the bullock is improving. We seem to be starting to get Friesians that are well capable of putting weight on off grass. They are also easier to carry over the winter on silage only. When they hit good grass in the spring they thrive very well. Feet still an issue but in ways these Friesians are better than the BF type animal. They seem to be capable of having good weight gain off grass( if we had it)

They are not as good as WH to gain weigh off grass but they are as good as any AA and better than most. Bucket fed Lm are staring to come through as well that are serious cattle but not enough of them. 2nd cross JEx's have good shape but weight gain is an issue.

Future Farmer

davidk1394 wrote: »

But it still pushes out twice as much milk. So it will take 100 crossbred cows to milk the same as 50 pure breds.

No it won't.

High EBI Purebreds are closer to Crossbreds than the "Elephants" Mr.Jones adores.

I'd love to know what his calving interval is, would imagine most of his cows calve twice producing 20,000 kgs over 3 years, or something like that...