Spring 2020..... 1.5m Dairy calves.... discuss.

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119643995#Comment_119643995

Some passing the book there. They recommended sexed semen. Sexed semen was a disaster. 7 years ago they recommended that there clients to not used sexed semen for at least 5 years as it was too unrealiable.

I never saw anything 5+ years ago about using proven bulls. In the rag they were all.in about easy calving bulls. I would love to have been there to ask him a few questions

Siamsa Sessions

Sexed semen and DBI?

Thats the best he can offer?

Pure proof if ever it was needed that Govt policy (implemented thru Teagasc) on more, more, and more milk is not changing any time soon

White Clover

Pure head in the sand stuff, ignoring the elephant in the room.

Dairy farmers need to question Teagasc on the path they have been lead down that has them in this position.

mahoney_j

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119644101#Comment_119644101

Exactly …..statement some cop out ……..dairy cows the way Tegasc recommend us to breed them are too small …500 kg and under ..very hard get any sort of decent beef ainmal who will kill out well from that

Base price

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119644141#Comment_119644141

Remember this - https://www.agriland.ie/farming-news/believe-it-or-not-we-never-considered-the-outcome-of-the-dairy-calves-teagasc/

alps

Jaysus boys...you get all hot and bothered, and you all doing the right thing..

Don't worry one whittle about the lads with the difficulty....poor lads and lassies having been led astray by the inept advisory😴

Thing is, they are the early movers, the quick adapters...they'll be gone out the gap before trouble arrives in.

Anto_Meath

Dairy farmers don't give a dam about the calves, its what comes in the cheque every month, once they are getting top dollars that's all that is important to them & to an extent they are right. They are making as much as they can as quickly as the can & feck everything else.

Base price

As an aside, I don't have a issue with the slaughter of non commercial dairy cross (JE/JEx/Kiwi) bull calves as long as it's done under the control of DAFM in an approved facility but I appreciate and understand that the majority of people don't feel the same. I do have an major issue when

• calves are unsold and left overnight in marts across the country because their owners refuse to collect them.
• calves are given away in their droves and unfortunately we've read in the newspapers about instances with high death rates on farms who've taken in these calves.

I'm not advocating the slaughter of these calves but I reckon that is the best outcome for them until the JE/JEx/Kiwi cows are removed from the national herd iykwim.

DBK1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119644396#Comment_119644396

I’d agree with this. And for as long as they have beef farmers willing to buy their calves why wouldn’t they have this attitude?

Lad’s can talk about greedy dairy farmers or teagasc all they like, but the beef farmers that are buying/taking the poor quality calves are just as much to blame.

If the quality isn’t right, leave them behind you and let the dairy man look after them him/herself.

Like Base said I also hate to see the unsold calves not being collected. That’s something that I think needs a major clamp down.

Base price

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119644396#Comment_119644396

@Anto_Meath I don't agree with you and it's a unwarranted statement. The vast majority of dairy farmers that we've dealt with over the past 40 years do care about their bull calves.

mahoney_j

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119644352#Comment_119644352

In fairness he was the only one …..rest of them fart and dance around the problem …..the one Tegasc man I’d have timer for

K.G.

But this isn't the first time something like this has happened.in the 80 s holsteins became flavour of the month and dairy farmers ended up with cows that wouldn't go in calf and took alot of minding in the Irish system.that probably laid the foundations for the willingness to adopt the je xcross animal which dealt with these 2 problems. The problem as I see it is it took 20 years for the fr cow to become fertile on farms again and it will take alot longer for the dbi to have an effect as there is nt the financial incentive for the breeder.

mahoney_j

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119644796#Comment_119644796

Breeding ,feeding and management have come further un those 20 years too though

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119644419#Comment_119644419

The problem is the market is unwilling to accept that solution. I think I saw an article where 40% of farmers rearing calves have left or are only left that reared calves five years ago. It's an astonishing figure one way or the other. Add to that we have probably 150 k extra calves on the ground every year.

People may consider calf slaughtering is the answer however it would have huge implications for the industry.

Add to that the fact that calf exports of 200k are probably going to be gone within3-4 years.tgat will leave a lot of calves to be reared by new rearers

Sheep breeder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119644419#Comment_119644419

Sort of agree with you on the jex and free calves, there is a guy in your end of the world a poster boy for these bad calves on YouTube and this suits the dairy farmer when they get support for these poor quality and will continue as wrangler says. Any guy that thinks free calves are great says more about the farmer than the calves.

Sheep breeder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119644476#Comment_119644476

Have to agree with Anto, that the new dairy cub is totally different than the old dairy farmet in attitude, calves is seen as a by product and ask any contractor what are the young cubs like to deal with. Seen it locally where the new fella or cub is all about milk solids and has being drummed into them by advisers and trips to New Zealand"

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119644419#Comment_119644419

It's the image of slaughtering calves that'll get it banned, The vegans are using the idea of taking a calf from the mother as being a problem, but the image of weaning a young calf is very tame compared to slaughtering a young calf or what is actually a worse image, abandoning them in the mart.

trixi2011

We have all this talk of slaughtering young calves and how bad it is . No one is talking about how they are actually going into the food chain in countries that need cheap sources of protein. There's no talk about how when the weather disrupts the calves going for export a high proportion of these calves end up been bought up for this facility it's all a very one sided argument.

mahoney_j

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119645979#Comment_119645979

It is bad and it’s tainting the dairy industry …can’t remember the exact figure but vast majority of calves going for slaughter come from about 160/170 herds and these would be herds producing calves that exporters or calf rearers just don’t want …..no point dressing it up or making an excuse for it vast majority of dairy farmers don’t want it

Tonynewholland

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119646995#Comment_119646995

I think it's around 100 herds sending in over half of the calves

GNWoodd

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119645918#Comment_119645918

How can a farmer abandon a calf at the mart ? Surely if they are registered, the owner is easily identifiable ? The book should be thrown ( by both mart and DOAFM ) at anyone doing that .

I have to laugh at marts sometimes . You can get pulled up over having a badly dehorned animal that will be dead within a day or two and yet from what I read on here an animal can be abandoned.

Hard Knocks

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119648319#Comment_119648319

I think marts could do more. Marts selling young calves should have bedded pens

Anto_Meath

Marts could charge €10 entry fee for every animal entering the Mart before they give out the lot number. Refundable on sale or when collecting pass out if not sold. It would stop some of the messing. You don't see calves left in the Marts around here but you do see a lot of calves sold for €5.

Good loser

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119646995#Comment_119646995

No, it a'int bad. It's the solution to the emissions problem for Irish agriculture. I can see no other feasible option. If it's not adopted there is no way the 2030 targets (even the 18%) have any prospect of being met. Otherwise we'll be assailed by the ratcheting up of sneaky and not-so-sneaky regs.

Siamsa Sessions

Wasn’t there a story on here last year about someone leaving their unsold calves at a mart, and the mart manager didn’t phone the farmer but rang his co-op instead? And the co-op rang the farmer and told him to get those f*cking calves home quick.

Might be only an urban myth but I’m guessing any dairy farmer would listen to their co-op before the local mart manager. And it’s the co-op who need to be dragged into the bull calf issue. They’re getting cheap milk and incentivising lads to milk high PR cows (which are often the same cows that produce those worthless bull calves)

jaymla627

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119649243#Comment_119649243

It's not in their interests, if they go with a Arla tyre approach, they'll put the big lads, who are bobbying a few hundred bulls a year each under massive financial pressure......

When you see the draconian rules re chlorates in milk if your a glanbia supplier, and then see their policy allowing calf slaughter in department approved facilities you see how they're just suiting themselves

K.G.

But is nt dairy bull calf slaughter a fact of life in dairy industry worldwide.

Jjameson

Calf slaughtering is no solution. We are losing our moral compass. A safe live calf is part of our culture, tradition and was our upbringing.

We need joined up thinking on our production systems and the answer lies in the past. A reasonable robust cow that can hold flesh as well as milk. Let the breeders rear all progeny from them to weaning. With penalties in their milk cheque for any neglect or less than full effort in doing them properly.

Then let the market sort it from that point on.

Anto_Meath

There is a big dairy farmer beside me, he is your stereotypical dairy farmer, he is in every discussion group going, different contractors ever year doing his work as they are €10 / an hr or an acre less than anyone else, he is as tight as a duck arse under water. He feeds milk replacer to the calves at the minute as it is x cent a liter cheaper than whole milk. He has a poor Polish lad living in a mobile home in the middle of the sheds & the poor devil has to clock in and out when he is working. His calves used to be regularly unsold in the mart, the mart manager would be on the phone to him all evening to get them collected. Then he started getting the calves dropped back to the farmers farm and charging him carriage. So the farmer stopped showing his caves in the mart. He now gives all the bull calves at 10 days old to another genius down the road to rear and sell. This genius feeds them until they are about 3 months and then sells them at around €100 -€150 with tanglers buying them from him in April / May for lads who need a few livestock units to activate entitlements, you will see the same badly bred poorly done cattle back in the mart around November time as these lads unload them after letting them ramble on a large area for 7 months, with at least 4 owners at this stage they are still making €100 -€150 if a full merry go around. I was talking to this farmer the other day in co op, he was tell me he synchronize a batch of heifers back in March, he has 87 due to calf on Christmas day. I said to him you wouldn't see much of the turkey, he said it wouldn't buy a turkey as they are too dear and to much waste on them...

In fairness to all concerned it would be better if these bull calves were euthanized at a few days and then appearing in a mart every few months.

DBK1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119649623#Comment_119649623

Could be better off to euthanise the farmer!!