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Dairy Chitchat 4, an udder new thread.

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Comments

  • Posts: 214 ✭✭ [Deleted User]


    Some way to lose animals and the work involved trying to prevent it from happening. Plan doing lots of reseeding and thought clover was only way to go, is it or just go with grass and suck up high fertiliser prices but with less minding of clover as well?



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,577 ✭✭✭Mooooo


    Dunno will we have a choice but figure it out



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,579 ✭✭✭Wildsurfer


    It's good that we have farmers coming out telling us their experiences of clover. When we were on a teagasc clover research farm it was all positive from the advisor untill we asked about bloat. No problem lately except the year we lost 20 cows was the reply. Not anti Teagasc but this is a bit like the 'oops we didn't think about the Jersey bulls', pushing clover without a solution to the bloat issue. Going out to the field out and finding an animal dead is such a demoralising aspect of farming that a lot will be slow to adapt any measures that might increase that risk.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,431 ✭✭✭✭Say my name


    Go foliar and just grass and whatever clover seeds itself.

    Small farm here and I couldn't afford to lose stock to bloat with heavy clover. Lost a few in my father's time to bloat from clover too. You'd think sometimes agriculture has just been invented by advisors and farmers have just come from the town to try it out..



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,497 ✭✭✭GrasstoMilk


    To me it sounds more like nitrogen bloat than clover

    lost a 1st calver here 2 weeks ago and still sickened, she got fucked over the roadway fence and bloated up on the spot

    lost 5 in 2018 on my daughters 1st birthday, still haunts me. I absolutely hate loosing stock to the knackery, the loss of what could have been irks me big time



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,758 ✭✭✭straight


    Hard going. Do you have collars or something. Would they not pick up the distress?



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,294 ✭✭✭alps


    To pick up distress you need an aid that is within range of the data controller at all times. Do any of the collars stay connected at all times? Thought they only upload info when the cow returns to the parlour. The dead cow may not come back..



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,497 ✭✭✭GrasstoMilk


    Have collars yes but it happened so quickly it wouldn’t have picked it up


    collars we have will pick them up if they’re within 800m from station



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,294 ✭✭✭alps


    Can you install a number of stations arou d the farm?



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,583 ✭✭✭DBK1


    I can’t speak from a dairy cow point of view but from a beef perspective I’ve a lot of swards with very high clover content and haven’t had any problems grazing them. The first day cattle are let on to them I make sure they’re full from wherever they came from. If you let them out hungry they will gorge on it. It is recommended to have access to hay or straw for the first few days and restrict the intake. I’ve never done this and didn’t run into problems but again it’s beef stock and not dairy cows I have.

    Silage made from these swards is top quality too. I regularly make silage above 30%dm, high 70’s in dmd and high teens for protein. It will only yield 6-8 bales per acre every time but 3 cuts a year is no problem and all top quality.



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,143 ✭✭✭RightTurnClyde


    You'd wonder sometimes, alright. Teagasc comes up with an idea, no research, becomes policy, farmers run with it. Then a big Uturn within a few years.

    There's a share of "dairy experts" in Teagasc and the ifj that are from sheeps farms and they think they have invented the wheel re dairying. So many of their big policy creations since 2012 have completely failed. How much of their new big policy's in the last 10 yrs, from tillage farm conversions, to golf ball grazing, to OWP, to OCs, to lagoons, to Jerseys, to NZx, to high stocking rates, RBI/EBI now clover etc is sustainable, good practice dairy farming.

    Most of these were tried from the 50s to the80s and failed, farmers learned leasons, and moved ahead. The new advisors arrived on the scene post 2012, were of the opinion that dairying needed fixing and have done untold harm to an ag industry that was doing very well.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,497 ✭✭✭GrasstoMilk


    You can but we don’t need to here, most of the farm gets picked up

    very rare you’d have a cow chronically sick at grass, any really sick cows here are usually around calving when they’re in the yard



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,621 ✭✭✭cjpm




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,245 ✭✭✭ginger22


    Why would you bother with clover on grazing paddocks. Foliar feeding costs less than 20 euros per acre each round and you are in full control of grass, not depending on the uncertain clover growth, no spring growth, variable in summer and autumn depending on weather, bloat risk. Now red clover for dedicated silage swards is OK but only lasts 3 to 4 years. And dont get me started on mixed species swards, most will die out after 2 or 3 years and all you are left with are poor grass, clover and weeds. You would wonder where Teagasc get these genius advisors. One head guy comes up with a theory and all the minions repeat it like parrots and when said often enough it becomes fact.



  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 4,412 Mod ✭✭✭✭Siamsa Sessions


    Teagasc are civil servants. Their job is to support Govt policy such as FoodWise-2030 which is all about driving up exports/production. When something affects that single goal, like fertiliser price or environment issues, then they jump on any quick fix - like MMS, increasing clover, sexed semen, DBI, etc. Anything that might help, but won't impact the main policy (driving exports)

    Trading as Sullivan’s Farm on YouTube



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,143 ✭✭✭RightTurnClyde


    They can put "clover massively increases methane and CO2 production in cows" in the "we didn't think of the calves" box



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,146 ✭✭✭jaymla627


    Bloat is the least of it, on high molybdenum soils white clover is literally poison to animals, teagasc know this they have documented research on it and know vast areas of Ireland are simply not suitable for clover swards


    They're f**King clowns plain and simple



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 11,747 ✭✭✭✭mahoney_j


    Belter of a post and bang on ….imo this clover thing and amount of n it’s claiming to reduce is suspect at best ….I’ve incorporated a bit but at higher sr I can’t honestly see any benefit ….can’t say cows do better on fields I have more clover ….I’m more interested in seen what a mss sward will do long term



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,245 ✭✭✭ginger22


    MSS wont do anything long term, just a short term fix. Neighbour did some 3 years ago, was up on youtube promoting it for Teagasc. It is now fu,,,,d. He did another reseed this year, no MSS, just grass and clover.



  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 3,521 Mod ✭✭✭✭K.G.


    You ve got to wonder why teagasc haven't trailled foliar nitrogen. My take 9n teagasc is they should make mistakes.they should trail things and come back with the results and it's up to the farmers to make up their own mind on their results.personally o have my doubts about clovers ability to sustain stocking rates at any thing close to or above a cow to the acre and I think some lads haven't realised yet what the implications of reduced availability of nitrogen will mean.for the first time in maybe 15 years we are tight on silage due to drought and fertiliser reducing.if I have any crib it's more with ifj and jk in particular as he seemed to be very narrow minded in relation to nz practices.i ve picked and choosed what I adopted over the years and tried alot of things and still do but I am absolutely convinced that irelands adoption of a grass based system resulted in a huge lift in margin on most Irish farms.up to 20 years ago irelands system was strongly geared to a semi Indoor high input system which demanded a very high level of management and labour imput.how quickly we forget the high empty rates of the 90 s.its easy to blame someone else but every one has a head on their shoulders too



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,539 ✭✭✭JustJoe7240


    Just come off twitter and some of the farmers on there are painful. Very condescending in their manner as If everyone is wrong bar them. A farmer put up a picture of some zero grazed grass and the first comment was a snipe from a prominent oad farmer. As if anyone wants to see any of that craic.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,262 ✭✭✭cosatron


    twitter is doing more harm than good for irish farming. Some lads should have more sense than put up some of the nonsense they put up.

    Post edited by cosatron on


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,758 ✭✭✭straight


    That's human beings for you. No harm in calling out the choir boys on their BS though



  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 4,412 Mod ✭✭✭✭Siamsa Sessions


    The danger is non-farmers see one good/bad thing and assume we’re all like that then

    Trading as Sullivan’s Farm on YouTube



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,758 ✭✭✭straight


    I agree. I subscribe to the theory that every farm and farmyard is like a shop front for our industry.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 577 ✭✭✭1373




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,273 ✭✭✭Good loser


    This is a free country. Take advice if it suits you and don't if it does not. Nobody is putting a gun to your head. Less of the infantalism.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,143 ✭✭✭RightTurnClyde


    See that's the kind of moronic statement that gives the likes of Teagasc a free pass. Indeed nobody is putting a gun to my head, but if the dairy industry was to follow through with what our advisors would ultimately have us do we'd be putting a gun to alot of bull calves head, we'd have cows fcuked out on OWPs, we'd be stocking at 3 cows/ha, pumping the big lagoon and firing out what ever fert is need to grow the new goal of X tonnes/ha.

    The infantalism lies with the droves who followed this unsustainable unresearched short term thinking, thinking they could turn a fast buck. Meanwhile the , what was, a profitable, high skilled, admired and reputable industry gets dumbed down to c/L profit as measure of your skill as a dairy farmer. This, with zero attention paid to the cost to the cow, the reputation, the environment or to the farmer.

    The infantalism lies with those that think dairy farming turns on a 12month cycle when in fact it is closer to a 12+ yr cycle.

    I think you need to sit down and look at the raft of changes and costs coming for dairy farming, most of which wouldn't be needed if there was a little more long term sustainable thinking. And wonder how did we end up here. Infantalism indeed



  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 4,412 Mod ✭✭✭✭Siamsa Sessions


    Re 12-year cycle: does it take the bones of nearly 20 years to breed a particular strain of genetics out of a herd?

    Talking to a neighbour last week and he said if you had JE blood in the herd and you wanted to breed it out, it’d take 7 generations of calves/heifers.

    Before anyone jumps up and down: This isn’t an anti-JE thing. It’s just the example he used. I’m sure it’s the same if you wanted to breed out any other genetics.

    Trading as Sullivan’s Farm on YouTube



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 577 ✭✭✭1373


    I read lots of teagasc articles, some I agree and others I disagree. You have to have enough cop-on to know what suits you .



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