Dairy chit chat II

K.G. wrote: »

And thefinal one.things must be better for farming in france than ireland otherwise you re an ejit for going there.😆😆

Every village needs an ejit...there was an opening for me here.

jaymla627 wrote: »

Never drew down a grant here our bps, it's amazing the weight lifted of your shoulders when your not worrying about the department our waiting with the hand out for overdue payments makes planning ahead fierce handy, build all our own sheds here anyways even with our own labour fully costed in would be putting up sheds for half the price compared to the grant route, put up this shed for 27 grand all in building contractor wanted 23 thousand just to erect shed and supply cladding steel no concretr

Fair dues Jay!







And roofed...!


(And there was I thinking that the grants were so pisspoor that it wouldn’t stretch to a roof)

Timmaay wrote: »

Is it not service vat that's the 13.5%? Also the 5.2% vat refund for non registered farmers, which the government adjusts every year or so based on the volume of vat collected from farmers, I assume this is slightly lower as a result of farmers claiming back capital vat?

And yeh agreed about tams, its a godsend for some stuff like milking parlours etc, but for other stuff, when you factor in builder inflation, higher specifications, extra paperwork etc, the 40% grant is simply not worth it for many items, or spends under the likes of 15k.

I spent a few quid here lately and a government grant would’ve been damn nice...

One last question on grants...are they taxable?

Gawddawggonnit wrote: »

Every village needs an ejit...there was an opening for me here.

Can't like this post enough

GrasstoMilk wrote: »

Is anyone here contract rearing they're heifers? How are you finding it?
We're really considering it here but I find myself talking myself out of it some days.
Land is the reason why we're Considering and partly labour aswell as dad isn't getting any younger!
It's the one job I really love and that's the main reason I find myself not being fully keen on it.
But it would mean I'd do a great job on the cows as they're all I'd have to look after, I also don't want to sitting twiddling my thumbs mid summer with no herding or dosing to do.

They're probably stupid reasons tbh because when your busy in the spring your very busy and when your not herding and dosing the heifers really doesn't take a whole lot of time either.

Anyway any thoughts on ppl currently doing it who is a one man band at home running 140 ish cows

Sounds like you have a pretty similiar set up to me, started contract rearing heifers two years ago leaving as 9 month olds, come back following December incalf. Calves are going next spring.
There was a combination of reasons for doing it, labour, lack of winter facilities and suitable outfarms.
working with a very good lad, so no issues in terms of performance, pay by direct debit every month.
cant see myself going back to rearing them myself for a while anyway.
On the cost side from my expierence it was a zero sum game.

yewtree wrote: »

Sounds like you have a pretty similiar set up to me, started contract rearing heifers two years ago leaving as 9 month olds, come back following December incalf. Calves are going next spring.
There was a combination of reasons for doing it, labour, lack of winter facilities and suitable outfarms.
working with a very good lad, so no issues in terms of performance, pay by direct debit every month.
cant see myself going back to rearing them myself for a while anyway.
On the cost side from my expierence it was a zero sum game.

Yeah we've ran the numbers here a good few times and it works out the same as leasing land and works out better if your have to reseed/fence/water and do work on soil on new land.
It's only myself giving myself reasons not to do it. What sort of price per heifer are you paying? Feel free to pm if you wish

as a sole trader technically you dont get a wage. your "wage" as you want to call it is what ever is left after tax and loan repayments

sole trader taxed on farm profit, taxed the same as any other self employed person income tax, prsi, usc

corporation tax if limited company, here you pay yourself a wage subject to income tax, prsi and usc

different reliefs/grants apply to all different sectors in our economy, changes yearly with our national budget, grant monies have been previously cut/delayed from TMAS schemes

kevthegaff wrote: »

Milked 144 through a 12 unit this year, easily doable if heifers are contract reared or all on the one block which isn't often. It's when I had land taken away, things would add up!

Yeah that's the number we're heading for and probably a few more with it. 2 blocks here and the heifers are on the other block 7 miles away. It's grand apart from breeding. We'll be reseeding that block and going using it for a dedicated silage block and just cows at home

mahoney_j wrote: »

Your running a good ship ,doing all the basics and more to a very good level .i see Labour as been your biggest issue .if ‘‘twas me id stand back and access things ,140 with compact calving and an autumn herd is a heavy workload for one person at crucial times )calving and breeding ).all is good when things are going well but when things start to go wrong with calves weather etc things can go downhill fast
Only my take but I wouldn’t go past 140 ,I’d cut winter milk ,only breed replacements from your top 25% of cows and use beef on the rest and sell surplus heifers and milking stock.unless u can justify a Labour unit beyond yourself forget about more cows ,180/200 cows needed to justify that Labour unit and unless u can get there double quick forget about burning yourself out milking more cows .nothing wrong with keeping 20/25 heifers and whatever beef ainmals he out block can support .go fixed time ai on your heifers and then let a bull off job done .leaves u lots of time with cows then
I’ve given up chasing no’s now ,heading for 40 ,family and Labour scarce compact spring calving ,3.6 Sr on milk block ,too 25% of cows served to fr ai as well as keeping 20 heifers .beef for rest ,I’ll have surplus milking/in calf heifers to sell ,breeding bulls and nice simple beef enterprise (just keep to 1.5 year old max).good relief Milker’s and farm relief for spring .simple system based on compact calving ,top notch grass,silage and fty in parlour and not been a pure slave to the farm and tax man .my max no would be circa 120 cows

Fair points but I'm at that already and running between 2 farms at crucial times and doing most of that work myself. Get heifers gone and I can spend 100% of my time at home at cows it will be a lot easier than what I'm at now even with more cows. Labour saving technology is going to help me
It's either take on more land MJ, go heifer rearing or stay where I am and that's not what I'm interested in ATM. I'm stocked as high as I can go no on the whole farm with Lots more potential to milk more cows here st home and I want to see how much more it's capable of

You're still very young and super enthusiastic in comparison to good few of us here haha, no real cure for that other than go ahead, hit your 160+ cows on yourown and utterly sicken yourself of the whole lot .

But nay I'd disagree with everyone focusing on this magical leap to 180/200cows and a full-time labour unit, if you can source the part time labour (and this obviously being a stumbling block at the minute), then I don't see any problem with the one man tipping on away towards 140/150. It would certainly be a better idea to try out having part time staff and all the changes that come with being a boss/manager etc, rather than pegging yourself into 200cows, and realising that being a boss is a lot trickier than you expected, alot harder to reverse back towards 120 then.

But G2M, labour is a serious stumbling block for you, you didn't keep on that relief milker you had there 6 months ago for a few days?? Have you tried to replace them? I think that whole experience gave you a bad impression of hired staff, but don't let one person bother you. You're very driven towards expanding away at the minute, nothing wrong with that at all, and better than you becoming bored in like 2/3 yrs time of sitting static with no real challenges, but 100% garranteed you will eventually come to the stage where you need relief staff, and you need to start out now learning all the skills of managing them.

The other thing I will say is your definitely need to look at fallback plans, and keep a comfort zone as you expand away, your dad isn't the youngest anymore, what if God forbid he wasn't able to help you at all in the farm suddenly, where would that leave you? What about your own family situation ha?

Timmaay wrote: »

You're still very young and super enthusiastic in comparison to good few of us here haha, no real cure for that other than go ahead, hit your 160+ cows on yourown and utterly sicken yourself of the whole lot .

But nay I'd disagree with everyone focusing on this magical leap to 180/200cows and a full-time labour unit, if you can source the part time labour (and this obviously being a stumbling block at the minute), then I don't see any problem with the one man tipping on away towards 140/150. It would certainly be a better idea to try out having part time staff and all the changes that come with being a boss/manager etc, rather than pegging yourself into 200cows, and realising that being a boss is a lot trickier than you expected, alot harder to reverse back towards 120 then.

But G2M, labour is a serious stumbling block for you, you didn't keep on that relief milker you had there 6 months ago for a few days?? Have you tried to replace them? I think that whole experience gave you a bad impression of hired staff, but don't let one person bother you. You're very driven towards expanding away at the minute, nothing wrong with that at all, and better than you becoming bored in like 2/3 yrs time of sitting static with no real challenges, but 100% garranteed you will eventually come to the stage where you need relief staff, and you need to start out now learning all the skills of managing them.

The other thing I will say is your definitely need to look at fallback plans, and keep a comfort zone as you expand away, your dad isn't the youngest anymore, what if God forbid he wasn't able to help you at all in the farm suddenly, where would that leave you? What about your own family situation ha?

Ah Jesus I only asked for peoples opinions on heifer rearing not on on how the whole show is ran.

Seriously though, outside of calving where is the real work in cows.im going to be swapping 90 hd of young stock to milk 25- 30 more cows and cutting the running to a farm 7 mile away every day

This post has been deleted.

GrasstoMilk wrote: »

Ah Jesus I only asked for peoples opinions on heifer rearing not on on how the whole show is ran.

Seriously though, outside of calving where is the real work in cows.im going to be swapping 90 hd of young stock to milk 25- 30 more cows and cutting the running to a farm 7 mile away every day

I appreciate u we’re looking for views on contract resting ,like everything here things get side tracked ,I’m certsinly not trying to be critical nor is anyone else but we’re trying to offer our views based on experience we’ve had building
U said replacing 90 head of young stock ,surely u don’t have that amount of heifers ????.anyway I think Labour is and will be your sole biggest issue and thus burn out of yourself .140 plus cows is a serious workload on your own ,will that number be able to provide u with regular Labour and combined with expansion costs (cubicles ,slurry storage etc)and can the business support it ???
Feb/to late June is hectic (5 months)where time off will be at a premium ,after that you will have silage ,reseeding fencing Martinance ,fertliser etc as well as 140 plus cows to manage daily .then your back into autumn calving /breeding .at that number work is relentless and days /weeks /months start to fly by
Will all these extra cows pay u a sufficient wage and provide u with some sort of life away from cows .????.we had a very open and frank discussion in this in our disc group meeting ,general consensus was 100/140 cows max depending on set up was max a one man show can handle and even at that help would be needed beyond that unless the jump to 200 cows was made it was pointless expanding further as that number was minimum needed for full time second Labour unit and to leave a margin for owner ....

mahoney_j wrote: »

I appreciate u we’re looking for views on contract resting ,like everything here things get side tracked ,I’m certsinly not trying to be critical nor is anyone else but we’re trying to offer our views based on experience we’ve had building
U said replacing 90 head of young stock ,surely u don’t have that amount of heifers ????.anyway I think Labour is and will be your sole biggest issue and thus burn out of yourself .140 plus cows is a serious workload on your own ,will that number be able to provide u with regular Labour and combined with expansion costs (cubicles ,slurry storage etc)and can the business support it ???
Feb/to late June is hectic (5 months)where time off will be at a premium ,after that you will have silage ,reseeding fencing Martinance ,fertliser etc as well as 140 plus cows to manage daily .then your back into autumn calving /breeding .at that number work is relentless and days /weeks /months start to fly by
Will all these extra cows pay u a sufficient wage and provide u with some sort of life away from cows .????.we had a very open and frank discussion in this in our disc group meeting ,general consensus was 100/140 cows max depending on set up was max a one man show can handle and even at that help would be needed beyond that unless the jump to 200 cows was made it was pointless expanding further as that number was minimum needed for full time second Labour unit and to leave a margin for owner ....

I never said I would be on my own, dad is here and still years left in him but he's not going to be up milking cows at 6am but he'll do other jobs that aren't as physical (he's bedding the sheds ATM) and a relief milker is going to come into the fold just haven't actively looked for one yet.

Yes c90 is what will be reared next year if I do it myself or they're sent to some one. But that's not a number I plan on rearing all the time unless I've got buyers that are willing to pay the right price for them. 3 years down the line when I've got enough cows here and I've culled the poor performers I might cut heifer numbers in half and find a nice handy block near by to put them on but that isn't available ATM
We're Managing a lot more stock ATM than what we would if we went rearing and I really can't see it being that hard. There's lots of little things we've to do here that will make the whole thing easier ran.
I'm
Not dead set on heifer rearing and jay has a good point there but I don't see land coming available locally and I personally don't want to drop stock numbers Or go back rearing some beef stock You all won't agree with that but that's my decision