Dairy Calves 2024

Correct Bass, its weight that the factory pays for, so you need an animal that will carry weight. If you aren't killing an animal that is killing out in the 300 kgs + bracket you are wasting your time. A little frame of a thing is no good for beef. Its why there was a good turn in the Holstein friesian, they might grade poor but with good summer grass they can put on plenty of weight.

Are most jersey crosses not black and white?

Source good calves, that’s grand. What is done with the poor quality calves?

That's a very simplistic view on the whole topic. I'm afraid it's a lot more serious for the industry and deserves every minute of debate.

You are right no point worrying what others are at ….to a point but what we all do and to an extent what a minority do can have big repercussions for the whole industry …perception is very important these days and it’s important we give a good one ….there is and are farmers out there who think calf slaughter is fine and maintain it should stay …farmers who won’t change tak in bull selection because it’s just all about the cow to them ….we’re very near a stage now where the calf will be a cost against the cow that we will have to absorb .

Yes bass that's the big one is labour.but also farmers don't want to ,are incapable (in some cases), can't get help and never realised the labour involved in rearing the extra calves and in a huge amount of cases Don't have enough facilities to rear calves. The last bit is especially true on the bigger faster expanding farms.......... but it mostly boils down to the extra specialised time that is needed for calf rearing

Totally agree 👍

Also when I said farmers I meant to say dairy farmers . Not the beef farmers who buy and rear calves.

Not if you are situated in the centre of dairying country and there is a flush of calves in Feb/March. The usual thing is there is no boat this week.

Those are the days I love.

I don't know, a good price is a relative term. A good calf should get a good price relative to a bad calf.

Whether it's a good price relative to cost of production is another story

The cost of production is the period from the calf being born to sale.

It can still be considered as part of the cost of getting the cow back in milk of course especially if the cost of production exceeds the value of the calf.

Maybe but I've yet to bring home calves from the mart due to bad price

If shipping does go they will go after the exporting to non EU countries then. It won't help any farmer in this country. Some lads can't see very far ahead.

Lol! Real world facts for you coming up...

You're not entitled to a profit for rearing a calf.

You will have to accept at some stage whether you like it or not that calf production will become a cost to milk production. I.e if you want a cow to produce milk for the year she is going to have to calve. The alternative here is don't bother putting your cows in calf and see how you get on producing milk. It may well be more profitable to put her in calf and suck up the costs after that.