Dairy Chitchat 4, an udder new thread.

Siamsa Sessions

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122092863#Comment_122092863

Is there anything farmers can do to stop co-ops passing on the costs if they themselves become less efficient?

straight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122092903#Comment_122092903

One thing I noticed is that there wasn't much difference between wet ground and dry ground last autumn or this spring. Might learn to live with my wet fields a bit better.

I have to laugh at the lads blowing about getting to 200 cows. Now they have to drop 20 cows the whole thing is plucked. Not much hope for the rest of us.

GrasstoMilk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122092966#Comment_122092966

I could go evening ai but we’ve never done it in 50 years of ai and always got on fine.
Pre collars we would have served everything jumping but it’s just now I have the information showing me she’s not long started bulling and the fact I had a poor incalf rate to first serve last year it has me questioning my protocol

any way we left off the 3 earth cows to ai tomorrow morning, maybe it was the wrong thing to do 🤷🏻‍♂️

Jack98

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122093251#Comment_122093251

On a normal year we’d have all the dry cattle and heifers out for the start of March full time on the out farms that are free draining limestone ground, this was delayed about a month this year. We were lucky we always have a good reserve of silage built up but that was severely ate into this spring and now building it back up will be the challenge.

I saw on twitter one of our main female farming influencers declaring her farm will be unviable if they go from 220kgN/ha to a no derogation scenario and they’re milking between 180/200 cows I would say, what hope is there for us peasants….talk about sensationalism.

straight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122093284#Comment_122093284

Give them a 24 hr repeat. AI mens heads will be wrecked with all these collars. My own man wasn't too impressed with them this morning

Gillespy

My ai technician says it's better to be early than late. The semen will survive at body temperature in the cow for up to 24 hours. Any cow caught in no man's land could always be done twice for peace of mind.

GrasstoMilk

Yes

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122093318#Comment_122093318

yes that’s the other option

But then does that serve go down in ICBF as a repeat and you won’t know what your conception rate to first serve was, that’s my query on that

awaywithyou

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122092903#Comment_122092903

5 months silage…? jaysus according to ginger we have the best land in our parish yet we make enough silage to do us for 9months…. always make plenty of silage… going filling the diet feeder there shortly for the cows… got 15mm rain here yesterday.. and got 15mm as well on tuesday… if we were to get a bit of heat now there will be savage grass about..

'wet and windy may fills the barns with corn and hay'

cosatron

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122093361#Comment_122093361

im sorry grasstomilk but f**k icbf, once the cows in calf that's the main thing. stats padding has the whole game in heap.

awaywithyou

was talking to a lad not far from you who worked in the Dept. of Ag retired last year.. he told me 300-400 cows are being sold in Kerry each week… between marts dealers going straight to factories etc…

the_blue_oval

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122093361#Comment_122093361

Could do the second serve the following morning to a different breed and make a note of it. You won’t know till next spring which they held too but at least you’ll know better for next years breeding if the early or later serve is working better. As said above I wouldn’t be too worried about what’s down on icbf as long as they’re in calf, at least you’d know better for next year.

straight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122093314#Comment_122093314

Imagine if they had to survive on 130 cows. It would be some fall back to earth.

Jack98

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122093398#Comment_122093398

5 months minimum from November, not accounting for the silage the Milkers would have eaten in the backend. We’d always have a big surplus of silage around the yards come April cows would usually be out full time before the end of March and you need a good stock of silage as ground can change very quickly here, under 200 bales left here now and that’s after buying 50 or so bales at the start of the year as well, wouldn’t want anymore weather disasters.
Put silage out for Milkers yesterday evening after they had gone out after milking, went out to check a cow at 10pm near calving and only a handful had came in, all in the shed early this morning hoping that’s the last silage fed out to them for a good bit now, weather is looking up thank god.

Kerry2021

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122093489#Comment_122093489

I was talking to someone in teagasc this week. I found him very informative and helpful. A nice man to be fair to him. He told me though that he reckons long term the nitrates will be cut from 170kg to 150kg. Sure at 150kg they’ll be putting an awful lot of people just out of business. Don’t think it would personally affect me but it’ll have massive ramifications for the co-op’s here in Ireland as regards their milk pool

jaymla627

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122093530#Comment_122093530

Hes assuming the current shower of politicains both here and in Brussels will be in power to ram through their green agenda, the european elections could be very intresting, and the above shower could be in the minority instead of the majority

GrasstoMilk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122093414#Comment_122093414

it was more for myself to know than ICBF figures tbh

I’ll just have to go back to recording in the ai book and see how many have repeated that way

GrasstoMilk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122093489#Comment_122093489

tbf now I think the person jack is referring too has bought 70 acres in recent years. There would be good amount of money needed for that never mind what other infrastructure has been built

Say my name

Took a drive with an oap to the post office and took a different road home for the scenery.

There's an awful amount of land gone to tillage that was in grassland last year. I might be lambasted. But the whinging and begging to the minister has worked with the increased subsidies. I even see a dairy farmer with 20 acres on the home block accessible to cows by roadway gone into barley with tramlines. Another former dairy farmer a few hundred metres on. The dairy herd went and they are all completely organic tillage this year.

Whatever of timoleague and watching nitrates in waterways. All this will ensure more nitrates in waterways in this area now.

Jack98

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122093593#Comment_122093593

Don’t know any farmers buying 70 acres off the back of farming alone these days, I’m sure they had their research done and stress tested the loan repayment capacity at various stocking levels and scenarios before jumping into that commitment.

cosatron

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122093584#Comment_122093584

If in doubt do her a second time.

K.G.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122093489#Comment_122093489

Imagine if you had to start with 40 Acres of rock And rushes I wonder would you survive.

GrasstoMilk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122093671#Comment_122093671

it could be 4 or 5 year ago it was bought when land wasn’t at crazy prices and it was doable for a farmer to buy. There was also no mention of dero being at risk a couple of years ago, teagasc had promoted for years to aim for 2.5-2.7 lu/ha and that’s what ppl did

If you own all your land and are happy to sit at what numbers it can carry that’s fine but for ppl that wanted to make it bigger for what ever reason are going to be left very exposed. Not fair to be mocking them imo. It’s kind of like saying “I couldn’t /didn’t want to expand and now you have to cut back numbers after building them up and now you’re worse off than me after it all, haha”

mahoney_j

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122093318#Comment_122093318

why would there heads be wrecked …they get paid for a service …farmers going to expense of monitoring systems and investing in sexed semen should make full use of the technology and serve at optimal time …if this means serving am pm so be it it’s only for short few weeks

Jack98

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122093744#Comment_122093744

I’m not advocating for them to be ‘thought a lesson’ or any of the like, half the ground we now own was bought and have only two payments made on the latest block that was bought. My father never over extended himself and is now milking 3 times the amount of cows when he left school at 16 to go farming full time without the help of shares or off farm income etc. My point was that if you can’t survive at 140 cows what hope have you got, it’s easy have that new parlour, new shed or that new piece of land but if you haven’t planned for the worst before making them plunges who’s to blame?

straight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122093709#Comment_122093709

Yep

straight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122093820#Comment_122093820

Are you doing any AI yourself? Always thinking of doing the course here, getting monitoring system and dumping the bulls.

straight

The very definition of derogation meant that it was temporary. It's only a minority of farmers that blindly follow teagasc.

In business you have to adapt and not just blame other people.

Of course I myself are plenty guilty of whinging and Moaning but in the background I am not going to get myself into an unsustainable position and blame others for my decisions.

farmertipp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122092863#Comment_122092863

the big 3 need to be run well too though. I can see trouble down the road in dg if wrong guy appointed ceo. we need a fresh pair of hands. not someone who has been at dg coalface for yrs. someone with energy drive and vision. sadly lacking in dg atm

GrasstoMilk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122093848#Comment_122093848

my folks started with nothing, dads dad died when he was 15 , had to buy 40 ac off my fathers mother to start out

They took every chance possible and pushed it hard all the time, doubt I’d be farming at all if they didn’t do all that tbh

whelan2

I think the last 18 months would test the sustainability of any enterprise. Looks like we need to plan for 9 month winters from now on