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.

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.

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

I don’t know any suckler farmer who has the exact same number of cows calving every year... it always fluctuates depending on culls/replacement heifer/recycled cows. Looks like with this if you drop any bit you will have to stay down.

And you are selling them as weanlings. Imagine watching them after weaning for pneumonia. You will be surprised at the returns off the dairy cross and even Friesians when if you start keeping them after the cooonts are gone. It will be a TimeV Return. There is an article in the journal from a part time lad with 20 cows, 60 ewes and some dairy cross calves. Hours worked varies from13-20 hours per week.

When you have all dairy cross cattle on the out farm a lot of the time it will be a 20 minute visit on the place. Longest part will be going and coming from it. Not only that as cattle are quite you can get anybody to do it. Even if you do not call a day there is no panic

When you have all dairy cross cattle on the out farm a lot of the time it will be a 20 minute visit on the place. Longest part will be going and coming from it. Not only that as cattle are quite you can get anybody to do it. Even if you do not call a day there is no panic

Seriously what sort of sucklers do you think we have?

Numbers are away back compared to 2-3 years ago. Very few are doing store bulls from the dairy herd. They would have been squeezed last autumn or spring. A few years ago the bull kill would hit 220-250k this year it will be lucky to hit 100 k. Autumn kl has really been hit as 16-24 month bulls are those most discouraged

To be fair Bass is kind of right I think. Just today I went out and found a cow calved two days ago looking for her calf. After 20 minutes searching I found the calf in a 6' deep gripe. Had to drag that out.

I gave all day Thursday between a cow with a calf bed out to be got in for the vet. I also had a hard calving Thursday and lost a load of time with time with struggling calf after it.

Friday was lost with drawing 15 cows home to a shed to wean them and moving the weaned heifers to after grass and getting troughs sorted etc.

Saturday was lost in the main getting the 7 cows I have already calved back off the home block to the out farm with their calves as I bring them home to calve them and want the grass at home for the piebalds.

That is 3 days from milking to milking lost with them.

If that were a bunch of dry stock I would have very little of that and even if one was off colour I have good roadways and a handling facility out there so it is easy to manage problems.

With the proposed PGI and bord bia standard for grass fed beef, it allows for up to 36 months. The reasoning that the 30 months is still around, is that we have become conditioned to to it. The line will be thrown out is that the majority of cattle are currently finished under 30 months. U30 is just a tool that the processors use to massage supply and draw out cattle earlier than late autumn. it's the tool that is stopping forward prices from being offered to farmers. The sooner we as farmers wake up and putting pressure on stakeholders on a number of issues that affect us the better. It's not always handouts that we want.

When beef prices drop, beef bull prices take the biggest hit - when that happens the factories close ranks and farmers can't get their cattle booked in/killed. I know only too well as in the past we used to buy in up on three hundred FR's, AAx, HEx, continental sucks calves and rear them to finish at under 24 months.

Dairy cross bull beef requires intensive finishing feed regime of at least 70 days of adlib meal (with straw incorporated as roughage) starting at 5/6kgs/hd per day graduating to 12/14kgs/hd per day so as meal prices are only going up let alone the other costs of diesel, insurance, Vet and dosing/minerals it isn't viable.

I previously posted in 2013 why we quit finishing dairy bull beef. Realistically you're working for the whim of the factories.

You will have little or no choice but to enter QA if you have cows to slaughter. Factories often quote 10-30c/ kg less for non QA cows. Ya this year with tight numbers prices may not be discounted but any year with strong slaughter numbers they are.

Grueller's farm.is not that fragmented. He has if I remember right 50-60 acres around his house and 25 acres about 2-3 miles away with an outside farm of 80 ish acres about 12 miles away.

When you have numbers with Suckler cows you are going to have time issues. Dairycross drystock is totally different. Moving them is easier, handling them. Yesterday I had to move a bunch accross the road I put up a temporary fence from there paddock to the gate to get them up near the road ( pigtails and string) bought them up through the paddock next tothe gate, put a piece of rope as a backfence to stop them going back along it. Out over the ditch put a up my rope accross the road and opened the gate and they trotted accross the road.

Near enough Bass. 40ish about the house, 18 more 1 mile up the road and 82 more 8 miles away.

You are of course 100% correct in what you say. There are ways to make sucklers manageable, but dairy stock will always be easier kept.

In a parallel universe, I would have made the decision to convert to dairying at the start of this year. The setup costs would be modest enough for me (the family milked cows here until 1999), but the labour side of things is where it comes unstuck and stops making sense.

Back to the topic of the suckler scheme, has anyone else noted how unusually vocal the Journal are about it? At face value, Adam Woods was critical of the farming organisations across the board, where usually they cosy up to the IFA position. Is it all theatre, or do they mean what they say?

Bucket fed weanling are the easiest animal you ever carry over the winter. Any way decent silage with minerals and a kg of ration if you like will have them thriving. Stop the ration late January and compensatory growth at grass. Keep them moving onto fresh grass as calves ever 2-3 days and as yearlings every 7-10 days if possible.

When you house them the second winter probably no ration as lads discount them if they are hot. Even selling at 18 months after only one winter 450 kg FR are making 750 euro even if they were 100 euro calves they will leave a decent margin.

Just be patient buying calves and do not get carried away. Sell Jan/ Feb calves at 16-20 months and keep March/ April calves until following spring