EU Proposal on calf transportation. NO MOVE UNDER 35DAYS

Don’t know, the cow protects the suckled calf’s immune system, the bucket fed calf is more susceptible to worms

The bucket fed calf has to be vaccinated against lots, on lots of farms the suckler calf only gets a dose for worms and black leg if lucky

Every farm is different too

There is a good few Suckler farmers already rearing calves. It about getting the basics right. However no movement before five weeks if it comes in means no movement. That means most dairy farmers will have to carry calves to to five weeks, at that stage if some buyers requirement is an 8+ week old calf then dairy farmer will have to live with that.

If weanling cannot be exported either then the higher quality E/U+ weanling will have to manage with Irish prices. I cannot see it being economic to produce these calves. There would be as much return out of producing R+/U- calves and less risk calving.

I see no evidence that they are more susceptible to worms.

we worm them when they are settled, then after that only few weeks after housing in the winter. In recent years we stopped worming when animals are at grass to let the dung beetles recover and do their job, less worm burdens as a result

same for vaccinations, we never vaccinate.

I think it’s 5-6 years since we had a suck calf lost and that cnut got his head stuck under a gate 🙄

Suckling and rearing sucks I feel are very different, for the 8-10 weeks after sucks land they take tight watching and a vigorous attention to detail when feeding. Swift action is always needed, wait and see is risky, I’d be pedantic about giving a sick calf fluids as they dehydrate so quickly and that to me is a big cause of losses.

WTF is the point in the likes of Bord Bia and the IDA then?? Outside of relentlessly pushing the Kiwi Dairy Model what have Teagasc done to promote innovation or meeting the needs of a lower input farming model that needs to happen??. Most of the innovators in the area of new markets and agri products around the country certainly weren't helped or inspired by them, as detailed by the likes of the Farming Indo week in week out>Maybe its you that needs to wake up to the real world pal or are you suggesting Irish Farmers are too tic to wipe their own ar$e??

Some achievement alright to have the lowest beef and milk prices in the EU - their remit also includes market/product development in which their record has been less than stellar as I pointed out above.

Market sets the price, there's nothing wonderful about our food that we can get above the local produce prices in a country, I've seen our produce in foreign supermarkets and the local stuff being picked up in preference

That's a great post and one that teagac et Al should have been thinking about when they were pushing the expansion Idea

Here's a graph of the last few years beef price, there's no difference in the EU beef price and Irish.

Irish beef in UKis not going to make as much as UK beef ,It'd even make less if it was labelled as Irish

If you see by the graph the irish price is often ahead of the EU price,

I was in europe numerous times when the Irish price was more than the country I was in. If you're not happy with the EU price you probably shouldn't be producing beef

Young bulls in europe are better than the irish bulls, any that I have seen in europe would be E and U grade, no comparison,and even if there was E grade bulls here there wouldn't be enough to create a viable supply. Irish bulls would be very poor compared to European, Europen would be mostly purebreds

That graph is probably the best comparison for prime beef

I’m not saying that I either agree or disagree with what you’re saying about Bord Bia, I’m only saying that a graph comparing 2 entirely different products to make it look like we’re ahead of the European price is bullsh**e!

Why don’t they base it on heifers so? Or use all steers, or all dry cows or basically anything you like so long as it’s the same product?

I don’t dispute a single word you’ve said there. I purposely didn’t state my thoughts on Bord Bia until now as it was irrelevant to the original point I was making about the graph you linked to.

I agree with 99% of what you’re saying about Bord Bia. From memory I think the running costs of Bord Bia is about €75 million. There are about 1.8 million cattle, 2.8 million sheep and 3.8 million pigs slaughtered in Ireland every year. Add in live exports and and figures for any other enterprise Bord Bia covers and divide it up per ton of meat or whatever way you like and I’d estimate it’s about €20 per beef animal to cover Bord Bia’s costs.

I have no doubt that we would be a hell of a lot more than €20 per beef animal worse off without the advertising and promotional campaigns of Bord Bia so in my opinion they are certainly giving us a better return than we would achieve without them.

But none of that changes my original point on the graph you linked too. It is comparing 2 different products. It would be the same as comparing the price of heifers to the price of cows, pointless because they are 2 different products. A true price comparison would compare 2 identical products.

Edit to add; My figures and calculations are from memory and my head so I’m open to correction on any of them.

What was the angus beef fiasco?

Jrx been "doctored" as aax on the blue card....

As Jay said, selling jerseys as angus. When tests were carried out on ‘Irish Angus’ beef it was found to have no Angus in it whatsoever…but loads of dairy farmers were able to get their jex calves off as angus, so all good.

There was quite a furore at the time. McDonalds are even using French Angus now, in fact the AA breed is all the rage now with a lot of farmers abandoning the native breeds to produce French Angus. Imported Irish bred Angus are not wanted as breeding stock because, I suppose, of the lack of credibility in Irish producers. Funny how that fiasco wasn’t reported in Ireland while it made big news in Europe…green washing is fine until you get called out on it.