EU Proposal on calf transportation. NO MOVE UNDER 35DAYS

I will sell you calves at 5 weeks old for €100, and will deduct €25 from that price for every week earlier you collect the calf..

It was the opposite problem we used to have with friesian’s, we couldn’t get them to stop growing! The problem being they’d stay growing tall and long and only start getting fat when they’d be 700kgs plus. Now admittedly it’s probably 20 - 25 years ago since we kept any substantial number of friesian’s so I’m sure the breeding has changed somewhat in that length of time.

On your second point dairy farmers can’t entirely blame teagasc/FJ for all of the calf problems being seen now. A bit like lads that lost the run of themselves in the Celtic tiger and then decided it wasn’t their fault as the banks shouldn’t have gave them the money in the first place. There has to be an element of common sense and responsibility on the side of the farmer too. Did the farmers ask their calf customers if they would still want their calves when the quality drops through the floor? Did they look at the grading and pricing on the beef side and make an estimate of just how much of a drop in price the poorer carcass would have? Surely it crossed their minds that even as a backup plan they would need more facilities for all these extra calves? Sometimes it’s just too easy to point the finger elsewhere than take your own responsibility.

No. We’ll be the ones that will bear the cost of 120/130€ a calf to get them to weaning and sell, having an BF cows calf like suggested wont make any difference and you’ll have crap milk yeild

there will be so much stock in the country Larry and co will pay what ever the hell they like,

if export of calves go the beef farmer is finished IMO

It not a beef farmers problem it's an issue for the dairy side to sort out.

In theory IVF sounds grand. However the big issue is that it will spread the calving interval on a lot of dairy farms if they try to go down that route. Sexed semen if they can ever get it sorted will reduce the amount of fairy bulls. But a beef mop up bull has too many advantages compared to trying to watch cows for AI especially as labour is scarce on larger farms.

The way to sort is to get stick bulls genomic tested and to put up that information on the mart board when calves are sold

How come scientists can't come up with some way of fooling the cows body into thinking she has calved, then dairy farmers need only breed replacements with sexed semen!🤑

It'll be a problem for both insustries, ultimately it could mean dairy farmers having to pay for calves to be taken by beef farmers.

I can't get this ,the country will have surplus calves.weanlings stores and finished cattle ,the reality Larry and co. won't be able to stand they will be laughing so much .The only reality is there will starvation any bad year for cattle!!

And then they'll blame IFA, teagasc or whoever other than themselves. That's what amuses me if it wasn't so sad

It hasnt been too bad this year I think but that’s looking from the outside in

Where do lads think these extra calves are going to be fed. The land mass isn't getting any bigger so something will have to give somewhere to feed the additional stock if exports go. Same consequence for beef as dairy as beef calves won't be exported either. There will have to be a reduction somewhere or there will be a lot of hungry cattle.

It's been a great year, summer grazers had no problem having €500 + between buying and selling cattle with no expenses, lambs making €50 -70 more than last year,, milk is going well and grain is good.

The crash will come next year with the rise in costs

Is a calf slaughter scheme inevitable or is it more likely that we have peaked on cow numbers and that between the various stumbling blocks facing agriculture, that a reduction in the national herd is the more likely outcome. In fact irrespective of this calf export issue its looking like there will be a reduction as a result of climate policy.

At 2 hours a day, it going to take 2 weeks to get to Holland, and they'll have 14 movements on their card..

Greens - anti animal agriculture.

The sooner people cop onto that instead of going hang on now we'll discuss that for the next six months.

You stifle animal agriculture you stifle agriculture as a whole.

You're making assumptions without any foundation, I come from a farming background myself. I'll continue to post here however I like, just like the other posters. Thanks

It will be turned into another stick to beat the image of agriculture with whatever way it goes

Fing horse's for god's sake 🙄🙄🙄🙄 that is a real polluting industry with no real need to exist at all

Flying calves was a brain fart that arose during the last IFA presidential election. A candidate proposed it without any research on the feasibility or costings on it and that is even if either airports would allow it or commercial air transport companies would have any interest. It was similar with upwards only convergence.

There is a big difference between flying a horse worth 5-20 million to Australia and flying hundred of thousands of 50-60 euro calves to Holland.

Personally I can never see it happening it a red herring just like upward only convergence proved to be

Aeroplane emissions are not counted, so leave out that argument.

And if you do want to arguue fair, count in the flight emissions, but also count in the carbon the grass has extracted from the atmosphere (which is more than the cow emits)..

The climate debate is built around a farcical set of inventory figures. Flights are excluded as are carbon removals by herbage.

Consequently agriculture, and particularly bovines, have been hung out to dry.

Calculations actually show cows emitting less carbon( even as a CO2 equivalent) than they consume in their feed, a combination of grass, silage and grain, all which have taken carbon from the atmosphere, of which less than half is emitted through belching (methane) and respiration (CO2).

Respiration isn't taken into account in the inventories either..ie any respiration, from farm animals, wild animals, pets, humans...

There seems to be some sort of assumption that animals breath out an amount of carbon, which they took into their bodies as food, which originally was taken out of the atmosphere by plants..all of which is too difficult to count...so it is ignored..

And subsequently Cows are getting ridden bareback in the discussions..

I agree with you. Yes the supermarkets are really bothered by animal welfare......as in its consumer driven optics ......... farmers welfare not soooo much and that's also consumer driven.

https://fb.watch/9Skem6Wy3C/