Dairy Chitchat 3

yosemitesam1

alps wrote: »

And if you read this exert from the report, you'd think the news was great..


Serious pollution of Irish waterways continues to decrease, according to the study: Of all the water bodies that were examined, only two were found to be seriously contaminated, compared with five in the 2013 to 2015 study.

According to the agency, in the late 1980s, 91 bodies of water were found to be seriously polluted.

Would be interesting to know where all the applied n and p ends up, with n only about 20% ends up in milk, less again with beef

alps

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

Would be interesting to know where all the applied n and p ends up, with n only about 20% ends up in milk, less again with beef

It would be.....looks like it isn't "all" in the rivers

Panch18

GrasstoMilk wrote: »

It's tillage around here pushing the prices. 320 per acre paid for an ex dairy farm last spring by a tillage farmer for spring barley. Give back the SFP on top of that as well

Same here

It’s always the tillage fellas who get the land round here, dairy fellas can’t compete

Says a lot about dairying and tillage

yosemitesam1

alps wrote: »

It would be.....looks like it isn't "all" in the rivers

Maybe it is all in the rivers, just watered down enough not to cause major problems...

Say my name

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

Maybe it is all in the rivers, just watered down enough not to cause major problems...

Results, measurement and comparison are the only things that matter.

charolais0153

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

Would be interesting to know where all the applied n and p ends up, with n only about 20% ends up in milk, less again with beef

I doubt much n is leached. More losses to the atnosphere than anything

yosemitesam1

charolais0153 wrote: »

I doubt much n is leached. More losses to the atnosphere than anything

Looked it up, 350 thousand tonne of n fertilizer spread, roughly 13 thousand tonnes ends up as nitrous oxide and 96 thousand tonnes as ammonia.
Maybe 15% ends up in products, so 32.5 thousand tonne.
So a little over 200 thousand tonne unaccounted for, some of which would just be turned back into nitrogen gas.

Say my name

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

Looked it up, 350 thousand tonne of n fertilizer spread, roughly 13 thousand tonnes ends up as nitrous oxide and 96 thousand tonnes as ammonia.
Maybe 15% ends up in products, so 32.5 thousand tonne.
So a little over 200 thousand tonne unaccounted for, some of which would just be turned back into nitrogen gas.

Asking the obvious.
Are they not just plucked from the ether by some randomer on the internet?
How can you be sure?

yosemitesam1

Say my name wrote: »

Asking the obvious.
Are they not just plucked from the ether by some randomer on the internet?
How can you be sure?

Teagasc for fertilizer, ammonia and nitrous oxide. Best grass based dairy farms are at nitrogen use efficiencies of low 20's at best.

Say my name

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

Teagasc for fertilizer, ammonia and nitrous oxide. Best grass based dairy farms are at nitrogen use efficiencies of low 20's at best.

On the efficiencies.
Do they just measure protein % and quantity of grass and put that against the amount N spread?

(They don't measure or have a handle on all farms. ).

I'd imagine the organic farmers that alps met on his travels to Tullamore growing 11t, if they put out 1 unit of bag nitrogen would have very high efficiencies.

Mooooo

What does the plant take

Birdnuts

alps wrote: »

And if you read this exert from the report, you'd think the news was great..


Serious pollution of Irish waterways continues to decrease, according to the study: Of all the water bodies that were examined, only two were found to be seriously contaminated, compared with five in the 2013 to 2015 study.

According to the agency, in the late 1980s, 91 bodies of water were found to be seriously polluted.

Those waterways were mainly polluted by industry that no longer exists or has cleaned up its act. Unfortunately the report also highlights how the number of "pristine" rivers has collapsed in the same period:(

alps

Birdnuts wrote: »

Those waterways were mainly polluted by industry that no longer exists or has cleaned up its act. Unfortunately the report also highlights how the number of "pristine" rivers has collapsed in the same period:(

Farmers have cleaned up their act. A fortune , Grant aided, has been spent on farm storage facilities. This is not the Ireland that best practice was a dungstead faced towards the river. And the number of pristine rivers has not collapsed...some have improved some disimproved with an overall reduction of 3%.... Studies like the Timoleague catchment has shown deterioration during weather events. It's runoff is causing problems at times of heavy rainfall. The new Nitrates regulations should and hopefully will go al long way in redressing this, with special reference to farm roadways etc... Rivers that previously had issues are not on this new map, they have improved. I am surprised that our river, flooded twice in the past week, but has run clean each time. When I was young that river would flood brown every time.
Look at the new inspection map. There is no correlation between the marked areas for inspection and catlle areas, or pig areas for that matter....And it's great to see the inspectors who will be working their way back up through the rivers in these catchment areas will do so with an advisory and cooperative attitude, not with a regulatory one.

yosemitesam1

Say my name wrote: »

On the efficiencies.
Do they just measure protein % and quantity of grass and put that against the amount N spread?

(They don't measure or have a handle on all farms. ).

I'd imagine the organic farmers that alps met on his travels to Tullamore growing 11t, if they put out 1 unit of bag nitrogen would have very high efficiencies.

Well really only on about lads spreading, unless you started measuring fixed n it'd be pointless.
But it's easy to do the sums for anyone, (milk protein divided by 6.25)/(nitrogen fertilizer plus ( bought in protein/6.25))

Say my name

It seems the Egyptians 4000 years ago liked dairy farming too.

Irish Archaeology (@irarchaeology) Tweeted:
These remarkable 4000 year old figures from Ancient Egypt show a cow calving (Early Middle Kingdom) #Farming #Archaeology

Photo by Keith Schengili-Roberts (CC BY-SA 3.0) https://t.co/XOIUT2rPo6 https://twitter.com/irarchaeology/status/1069218069334147072?s=17

Birdnuts

alps wrote: »

Farmers have cleaned up their act. A fortune , Grant aided, has been spent on farm storage facilities. This is not the Ireland that best practice was a dungstead faced towards the river. And the number of pristine rivers has not collapsed...some have improved some disimproved with an overall reduction of 3%.... Studies like the Timoleague catchment has shown deterioration during weather events. It's runoff is causing problems at times of heavy rainfall. The new Nitrates regulations should and hopefully will go al long way in redressing this, with special reference to farm roadways etc... Rivers that previously had issues are not on this new map, they have improved. I am surprised that our river, flooded twice in the past week, but has run clean each time. When I was young that river would flood brown every time.
Look at the new inspection map. There is no correlation between the marked areas for inspection and catlle areas, or pig areas for that matter....And it's great to see the inspectors who will be working their way back up through the rivers in these catchment areas will do so with an advisory and cooperative attitude, not with a regulatory one.

I don't dispute most of the above but thats the headline figure - I was talking about rivers with the highest quality rating. Below is a quote from the report


"Still losing high-quality rivers
The number of our high-quality river sites (Q4–5 and Q54) is continuing to decline, with a further 0.6%
decline in 2017 (Indicator 2). This assessment now puts the percentage of high-quality sites at 17%,
compared to 31.6% in the 1987–1990 period, meaning that the percentage of these sites has almost
halved since the late 1980s. We have seen a modest increase in our most pristine waters (Q5), from
23 sites to 30 in the current period, but this is against a greater than 10-fold decline in the number of
these sites since the late 1980s."



Now certainly all this cannot be blamed on dairy or other types of conventional farming - industrial forestry, windfarms etc. are all having a negative impact in many catchements. Eithier way it is far from a satisfactory state of affairs given the value of our game fisheries, water supplies etc.:(

Mooooo

Birdnuts wrote: »

Thats the headline figure - I was talking about rivers with the highest quality rating. Below is a quote from the report


"Still losing high-quality rivers
The number of our high-quality river sites (Q4–5 and Q54) is continuing to decline, with a further 0.6%
decline in 2017 (Indicator 2). This assessment now puts the percentage of high-quality sites at 17%,
compared to 31.6% in the 1987–1990 period, meaning that the percentage of these sites has almost
halved since the late 1980s. We have seen a modest increase in our most pristine waters (Q5), from
23 sites to 30 in the current period, but this is against a greater than 10-fold decline in the number of
these sites since the late 1980s."



Now certainly all this cannot be blamed on dairy or other types of conventional farming - industrial forestry, windfarms etc. are all having a negative impact in many catchements. Eithier way it is far from a satisfactory state of affairs given the value of our game fisheries, water supplies etc.:(

Biggest change in that period is housing planning and location along with industry growth. Blaming it on dairy/agri in the last 3 years is an easy way out

Birdnuts

I would also give credit where credit is due eg. In the Lee valley in Cork where there is a fair bit of dairy, the river continues to hit high quality levels according to the report. Shows what can be achieved - indeed i remember reading about some local led scheme there involving dairy farmers,NGO's and government agencies to improve the water quality in the catchment in the last few years. The likes of Teagasc need to look at such things with a few to a nationwide rollout which can only be positive for the industry's image going forward

Waffletraktor

Mooooo wrote: »

Biggest change in that period is housing planning and location along with industry growth. Blaming it on dairy/agri in the last 3 years is an easy way out

Farmers in wealthy western countires have lost the right to be environmental vandals and the sooner folk realise the new reality the better rather than the 'but we're only nearly worse than them over there' doesn't work.
Despite all that get's said by the marketing and greenwashing, our domestic farms are not viewed as important until there is not 10 varieties of lettuce on the supermarket shelfs only what you can convince people to pay for your value added over commodity dross as you can't afford to be 'more efficient' than someone happy on a fraction of your wage and getting cheap developement loans to aquire the same sort of capital while Teagasc and other western based research institutions fall over themselves to give away the intellectual property they need to replace you. It goes for all production sectors and scale.

visatorro

Any idea the cost of a plate cooler?

simx

visatorro wrote: »

Any idea the cost of a plate cooler?

2k + vat for 51 plate fitted

Mooooo

What are yer protein % like? Have fallen to 3.81 here on silage and 7 kgs 18% nut. Finished one batch of bales and started another which I think are better anyway, awaiting silage results. First time having all end of lactation cow's in the herd

Brown Podzol

Mooooo wrote: »

What are yer protein % like? Have fallen to 3.81 here on silage and 7 kgs 18% nut. Finished one batch of bales and started another which I think are better anyway, awaiting silage results. First time having all end of lactation cow's in the herd

3.91. Fat is 5.1. Same diet and all cows at end of lactation. My experience is that p% will drop away gradually to around 3.6 .

GrasstoMilk

5.47 bf
4.2 pr
Maize, bales and 4kg in parlour.
1.35 kgs
First cows dried this morning. Should have a better idea as to what the actual yeild is then
Protein hit 4.5 2 weeks ago when they were at grass still

Mooooo

Keeping maize here till spring, want to get thru the bales before calving. Bf is at 4.82 last result but lactose is holding well at 4.67. They are doing 1.5kgms.
Had put the drop in protein in previous years down to fresh calvers joining which obviously was the case just didn't think it would drop so much without them there.

mahoney_j

5.67 fat 4.15 p 12.2 Ltrs milking oad .9 dry last Friday 74 dmd 34% dm bales been fed made in September and 4 kg 18% in parlour .
Cow dead in cubicles there now too ,mad bulling yesterday milked and ate this morning fine ,been a long year .be fully dry 22/12 looking forward to it

whelan2

mahoney_j wrote: »

5.67 fat 4.15 p 12.2 Ltrs milking oad .9 dry last Friday 74 dmd 34% dm bales been fed made in September and 4 kg 18% in parlour .
Cow dead in cubicles there now too ,mad bulling yesterday milked and ate this morning fine ,been a long year .be fully dry 22/12 looking forward to it

Will you get a pm done?

mahoney_j

whelan2 wrote: »

Will you get a pm done?

No ,scanned empty but big growth in womb ,possible if ruptured

Timmaay

Mooooo wrote: »

Keeping maize here till spring, want to get thru the bales before calving. Bf is at 4.82 last result but lactose is holding well at 4.67. They are doing 1.5kgms.
Had put the drop in protein in previous years down to fresh calvers joining which obviously was the case just didn't think it would drop so much without them there.

Maize great for keeping the lactose up I find!

Mooooo

Timmaay wrote: »

Maize great for keeping the lactose up I find!

It's a good feed, when in winter milk would have struggled to consistently make silage on its own good enough. Not feeding maize as I want to keep it for fresh and near calving cows in spring, that's why I'm surprised at lactose holding