Grass regrowth very poor at the minute. Luckily we are still on the first rotation.
Delaval do one as well might be worth pricing them also,I'd imagine they would be as good if not better than Lely
I'm not with Teagasc but in fairness to them, there's a little more variety to their advice than what is presented in the media. My gripe would be with the media (as ever) who present a very simplistic view of all sectors, and then reference Teagasc to back up their "this is the only way to do it" story.
Not talking about advisers per se. I'm farming 7 years and I've had 7 different advisers. I'm talking about their overall agenda, their Signpost farms and their blanket "solutions".
I do my own thing, always did.
You're hallucinating..
Have you a teagasc advisor?
Did he/she push any of the above on you?
I've a very good teagasc advisor here.
I wouldn't be anti teagasc myself but they lost the run of themselves pushing scale, second units, zero grazing, higher stocking rates. Alot of it under the guise of needing a second income as if the older generation was going to last forever.
They are still overdoing it with their "Signpost farms" all stocked at 3+ per Ha.
Also, I find they do get very cranky when you question the grand master plan and suggest an alternative.
My point is that no one forces you to take any advice. Yes there was a lot of bad advice given out for sure. Everyone knows the cock up they made with the calf issue anyway.
But you have to remember that they’re a national advisory body. All marketing of product in this country emphasises grass fed, natural approach with minimised inputs. Whether it delivers a premium is another kettle of fish. There’s nought wrong with different systems but advice is a la carte. No one forced anyone to milk 200 cows. It’s people who take advice too seriously is where the problem lies. I appreciate there should be other options there but there are plenty private advisors out there that will point you in the direction you want to go. Small milking platforms with high stocking rates do not fit the National image which we trade off.
Do what suits you and don’t go to these events or don’t read the journal if it annoys you to see people who don’t understand your circumstance talk down to you.
It grates on me to see people get annoyed by what Teagasc say. It’s a bit like the free speech argument. You choose whether you get offended or not
Issue I’m getting at tho is the one dimensional approach to breeding and dairy advice …..works well for some and larger scale farming but not on smaller farms or those farming trick land or fragmented farms ….quite often at open days and in advice from advisors higher feeding rates ,bigger more productive cows .feeding maize ,z grazing etc are point blank put down and that farmer made feel he’s doing something wrong ….you really have to look elsewhere for advice and trial work on such things
Super job
Ye overall very pleased, I had a couple of teething issues with it but in fairness they stood over it and going fine now. It suited me because I have a few short passages, so pricewise nothing between that and standard scrapers.
Important to keep the sensors clean as if not you will come out in the morning and find it facing into a cubcle or a wall.. its a super job where there are slats keeps it spotless, also keeps the crossovers clean.
For anything over 3 spans of solid floor I'd say you'd need the collector.
My point is that plenty people want a simple life of not putting in that feed. The EBI system isn’t designed for those inputs. I agree with you though. This thing of ranking a farmer by his EBI when it mightnt be his perogative it’s rubbish.
What you’re talking about is shaping the system around the cow tbf Mahoney. If you don’t want to buffer feed, then breed a cow that you can avoid it but the way you’ve phased it there sounds like you aiming to have nice profitable cows and working the system around them. That’s grand if that’s what you’re comfortable doing but a lot of people don’t want that is my point. To quote the most misused statement “make the system work for you not you working for the system “
Well I priced a collector last October, was 35000. Put in Dairymaster scrapers instead, Replacing ones that were 30 years old. Have standard Lely scraper on outfarm, works fine.
Are you happy with it so far
Got the most basic discovery here in January, it's gone up a lot over the past 2 years. I'll pm price
No just a example supersire/punch/renegade/frazzled/ coonway would be the bulls used here from wws had been all semex until recently but wanted a few outcross sires, westcoast peresus/ardor/neptune/river/boldi armour/jabir would make up a good % of cows been milked with wws heifers only coming into the parlour this year, their alot stronger type cow in fairness but I wouldn't like them any bigger
Are u using that bull... I wouldn’t fancy him... chest width going in the wrong direction... i like the chest width and stature to be positive but close to each other and bull must be positive for rump width as well.... seems to be working as we got a good bit of positive feedback about our maiden heifers that we sold this year.... much stronger than previous years... we inseminated our maidens today using fixed time ai and our ai man made the same comments...
a bull I use a good bit of is fr6460 from dovea... I like the stock from him.. none milking yet though.. he’s suitable for heifers but unfortunately not available sexed
That’s just marketing …..there trying to get a foot in the door and compete with Munster Eurogene dovea etc ….there main catalogue contains some v solid bulls
Anyone get a price on a lely scraper robot lately?
They're proper catoluge has everything in it, 99% of Irish farmers wouldn't have a clue re American figures, so why waste a fortune on catoluges
Even WWS are going to the dogs. They send a catalog a few weeks ago listing "Spring grass bulls". Same format as Munster, Progressive, Eurogene. all EBI and no liner charts. Now I would not have been buying off them anyway as they had no polled bulls, but I think it is a race to the bottom.
Ah yes, great to get it off your chest and why wouldn't you. Everybody is entitled to their opinion.
The trouble in this country is advisory bodies and dairy advice from many is one dimensional and focused on kiwi methods for a large part ….that’s fine no issue but not every farm can make that system work ….American ,Canadian ,Dutch genetics can and do work here …they will graze as much as an Irish bred cow but require a bit more feed ….which they will return in the tank and in a viable calf and very good cull cow value
Reared when my parents bought land on 18 percent interest. Rain coming in the dwelling house front door type of stuff. A pound spared is a pound earned. It's ok to spend money to make life easier not to make life busier
We are just muck savages out west.
Had bother with embryo loses the last few years
think we have it sorted now, reckon low iodine was causing it.
Wtf ai man.
Fair play to your honesty but that infertility figure is challenging
It would want to be under 10% of all milking cows for me but then again maybe a higher output cow/ system has an effect.
Grass growth is slow atm, want to improve or I'll be grazing silage ground
Agree 100%. My point was don’t let the flaws in the Irish system make you breed a cow suitable to another country’s system
