Proposed New suckler Scheme

I assume you can increase number but just your payment won’t adjust?

What if they take the reference year as two years ago or last year and you had increased in the meantime.

What if you got locked up with TB and a loaf of incalf heifers you planned on selling calved down etc.

I think that it will be clarified.

What do ye make of the fact we’d have to be Bord Bia approved? I never bothered with it before as we sell our cattle live, and I didn’t want the headache of all the paperwork.

Any hints or leaks as to the proposed payment rates? That will be the detail the scheme succeeds or fails upon.

It's really looking like an us and them type situation.

Unless QA is paid on slaughtered suckler cows they can shove Bordbia

The suckler cow is being made the scapegoat for dairy expansion

It's taking the precedent set by the Beam scheme and how the uptake was received.

No subsidy ever on a dairy cow?

Keeping cows for social welfare payment for the production of subsidised beef for a cartel of processors is wrong. Cormac Healy would join the ifa in lobbying for 300€ payment free for all numbers.

a bucket reared black whitehead will do as well on marginal land as a lactating cow and calf duo.

Dairying is the only enterprise actually putting real money into family farms. The cash cow. Pun intended. The progeny of which are for the most part ideally suited to supply our nearest neighbours with beef. Which is as good as it gets in terms of beef market price globally.

at no point since the introduction of domesticated cow to Ireland 3000 years have farmers kept them just to single suckle a calf in this country. until the 1990’s it was very very rare. They are nether traditional,logical,economic and the stupidity of those lobbyists looking for social welfare payments for them have had a kick too many to the head!!

I still have about 40 of them here alongside a dairy herd. I run them on an outfarm and calve them in the Autumn,from about now on.

After the last two days with these cooonts I will not apply for this scheme regardless if it offers €500 per eligible cow. They are pure and utterly hardship and as far as I can see, the only reason lads like them.is that they haven't tried any other farming system.

I have kept on a batch of beef crosses from the dairy herd this year and they are a pure pleasure to deal with by comparison. I expect them to leave as much or more money as well for a small fraction of the workload and hardship.

Dairy beef breeding needs a serious step up. Keep selling crap and your market will disappear. If the DAFM want dairy beef they are going to have to put structures in place to serious improve quality.

I think it's time to seriously look to DNA sampling calves at birth.having proof to dam and sire, when fed into the icbf database will seriously help sort the issue of calf quality. EBI needs to be weighted better to calf quality. I don't have the exact figure but I would hazard a guess that the average number of locations for a dairy cow is 4.5. That would mean that at about 3 of these calves are going to end up as beef.

Going to throw it out there and I know I will be shot down by some, but it has merit. If dairy farmers had to keep calves to 42 days, I personally feel, it would change the mindset to calf quality greatly. Big difference in having to look at feeding a calf for an extra 30 days.

I have both sucklers and dairy beef here and you will get caught out with a few screws of dairy calves. I would say that it is running at about 20%. These really hurts the bottom line as they are around for so long.

Something has to change quickly with calf quality, or else calves are going to be left on dairy farms. I can see in the next 5 years the export of calves coming to a halt or the age at which export can happen being pushed out. If this came to fruition, where will this stock be kept. Oh wait let's reduce the suckler herd

Whether any of us like it or not calves from dairy cows will be there as will the cull cows themselves. Neither the dairy industry nor the Irish beef industry or Irish agriculture in general can afford mass slaughter of calves. IMO yes like you have posted export of calves will come under pressure sooner rather than later.

However look at the price Irish farmers paid for calves at stages this spring. Once again they out competed exporters for Friesian calves. For all the talk about quality it has bottomed out and is improving. I no longer see the large number of first cross JE around, the second cross is as good as run of the mill Friesians if done right.

On DNA testing it would be more appropriate to DNA test dairy farmers stock bulls. However the big question is would marts display this infor and could your average run of the mill farmer interprete it. The only real pity about DBA testing in Agriculture is absolutely no DNA testing of farmers has taken place.

Just one thing to remember when beef farming it takes 2okgs DW extra and a rise in grade excluding QA to make 100 euro extra on a carcasse

What do you mean by a calf registration amnesty?

It never going to happen. It up to farmers to manage out of it themselves. Unless you are doing it accross a complete herd and are 3-5 months out of cycle it's not really an issue. It immaterial now with the bull game gone and while weight limits are not in place this year they could haunt us next year