Dairy Chitchat 4, an udder new thread.

@Siamsa Sessions another small thing but is really annoying me about my shed... get slats with big enough agitation points, mine are very small, a right pain for the contractor to get the agitator into the tank.

I believe there are different sizes, I never thought to even ask.

A bit of a day out.

Montbeliarde open day.

110' of 14'6" tractor slatts with one manhole slat will be €12k inc vat. The 16'6" are only €1500 extra

Edit to add: 110'x9'x16'6" tank cost me 42K last year excluding digging out and slatts. Grant spec.

There will be because every increase in N in the country is being blamed on the cow.

It's not being blamed on rising soil temperature, ground being tilled, more housing, urban/industrial development.

Even if a reduction is shown in a cow area with derogation farmers. That info is disregarded as it doesn't suit the narrative to demonise pasture based farming and the cow.

Edit to add: there's self proclaimed vegans putting the epa's case to eliminate the Irish derogation in Brussels.

Not a hope its retained past 2025, we will all be working of 170kgs/n ha from then, tied up enough leased ground last week on a 5 year lease from next year to keep numbers at circa 130-140 going forward at 170kgs, will be interesting to see if the rental market takes off on again our lads just drop numbers

Writing was on the wall a long time ago for this reduction it was no real surprise to see it come to pass. It will bring with it a whole host of problems, not many will want to keep any extra calves now bar the essential replacements, lads/ladies in the 50-100 cow bracket will be hit hardest by this.

There will be no push back against this either as you have to row in with europe to be fair, so much for all the roaring and shouting down in west cork a week or two ago.

That will just surely never be an option realistically no co op would accept your milk?

I can see where you’re coming from though if the farm is capable of carrying 100 cows through years of good management then why should it be confined to 70 cows say. Red tape is the killer.

Absolutely nothing to stop it atm …..as long as bord bia complient coop will collect your milk …..if you’ve slurry storage ,rivers fenced yard compliant etc what can they do ……advisors etc wouldn’t like it for obvious reasons but more and more people are doing this and considering it

You would have to be in receipt of very small payments to justify that though it would probably however suit some farms under those circumstances. I don’t think I’d take the option of milking 20/30 more cows to forego payments.

I get where you’re coming from but if you have payments worth 20k for instance you’d definitely be better off milking 80 cows and keeping them as opposed to 100 cows and no payments surely for example.

One thing for shure the end of derogation will seriously cripple the rural economy and with it the countries economy. I was talking to a rep today who sells to co ops around the country. He said that nothing was moving. With the bad prices farmers are not spending.