Dairy Chitchat 4, an udder new thread.

TBH, I can't believe that you didn't see it coming.

Noticed that too. Not a clue like.

Showing 8 year old footage from new Zealand was a bit stupid too.. And the 2 ones at the mart do they want a big massive pen for each calf in the mart individually. See my friend wicklow cattle company on it too....

Hold on there. Of course you can catch a calf without catching them by the ear or tail. That’s a silly thing to say

There was some fine calves on it I thought. Alot of fine healthy dairy beef calves referred to as worthless and byproducts. But still worth enough to drive them all the way to Poland and Spain.

Biggest problem I see is too many cows calving at the same time. The calves are far from "worthless byproducts" before and after the glut.

The NFU were quite vocal in their opposition to Brexit. It was other cheerleaders that were making those claims

For me, the guy throwing the calf off the trailer was the worst part. They must have filmed hundreds of hours to capture that. I've been at marts all my life and I never seen anything like that. I still think the use of sticks to handle calves is fine as long as they are not belted with them. Giving a calf a gentle prod to move and using the stick to direct them is fine in my book.

Would subsidised Veal Production be the answer to "worthless" dairy calves?

Apart from a couple of incidents there was nothing on show that was bad .Fran I say was disappointed that he didn't get any real juicy stories. Where was the ifa all we had was a certain farming couple who loves to be in the limelight. Then on twitter we'll have the certain progessive farmers who feed no meal and can make a profit at 20 cent a litre apparently having a pop at mart staff and hauliers I wonder where there calves end up.

You had the president of ICMSA, A dairy organisation, commenting. IFA were never asked to comment

Local farm store had a box of show sticks for sale. They put a sign on the box cattle sticks €10. Not long after the cruelty crowd were on. Sign was changed to steering sticks....

Conception rates with sexed semen wouldn't be as good as conventional seven. It's also more expensive. For those spring calving herds it's crucial to have a compact calving spread. If cows don't hold to the sexed semen you're losing the compact calving season

Even if it's more expensive and it doesn't work as well as conventional semen, surely it's the only answer to this issue. The issue being that there seems to be nothing farmers can do with the male dairy calves. They're not worth any money. Transporting them (as seen on the programme last night) shouldn't be an option. It's incredibly cruel. Can anyone propose an answer to the issue of too many male dairy calves that doesn't involve live exporting?

Their is plenty of continental calves exported too, their not actually worthless, its the period from feb-april that they are, 40-70 euro is paid by shippers for later born calves, sexed semen won't solve any issues their is still going to be a million plus calves needing to find a home and circa 700k of these in the space of 6 weeks that's the issue, compact calving as advocated by teagasc has the whole system at breaking point in the spring period

Calves being taken from their mother's is not actually a big issue at all. The calves are as calm as a breeze and actually thrive really well under these conditions with farmers caring for them extremelywellinthevast majority of cases. The problem I see is the length of time between feeds for these calves. A lairage at Rosslare might just help alleviate that.

Thanks. I'm not against farmers at all. I don't disagree with killing animals for food, but I disagree with the way they are often treated before dying. There's no need for cruelty. I always assumed there was very little, if any, cruelty involved in dairy farming but the programme last night was an eye opener. I think a lot of people will be shocked to learn how male dairy calves are discarded and treated so badly. It's certainly helpful for farmers to engage with concerned consumers.