I started off with about 10.5k it now below 8k. Lads with decent payments from 2005-2015 had a great chance if they invested wisely in there system. Most with substantial payments 50k+ would have had chances to expand easily via land acquisition
That would work alright however the flaw is will you need to do it 6+ months a year even on good ground or will you get away with grazing fulltime 8-9 monthe a year. Along with that will these cows be able to walk a kilometer plus every day
Yes. There would have to be a flaw of course. Guess that why some lads can do and others teach.
There is lads achieving similar but its gennerally lads at 100 cows max who have tge attention to detail.
It's is achievable but you would like to see the data on it and how much grazed grass played a part. Top quality's silage is not cheap.
Well we have over 200 cows and that is exactly what we are doing and would know several lads with more cows running the same system.
Powering along, not whinging about nitrates.
What kilos of milk solids are you sending, 650 plus, agri-king slide you referenced would relate to a fresh cow, I'm assuming, I work of cows getting the above diet need to be doing 2-2.1 kgs of ms, and obviously in the last 100 days of lactation around 1.8kgs Ms, to let them put on a bit of condition and get set up for calving condition score wise
Yes fresh cows Spring calved, grass when ground conditions are good enough, late March early April, grass only with parlour feed for summer, back on buffer feed September on.
I would disagree with this. we export slurry for years to keep under the 170kg and its working out ok, it helps us carry the extra few cows, which means allot on a small parcel of land.
Kerry keeping their milk price @ .35 for November
Re lads powering away, theirs 150 cows going through the parlour here at the minute , doing 23 liters @4.9%f and 3.7%pr working of a base price of 33 cent, be up at 41 cent approx per litre with solids, round it off to 9.50 euro a day cow income, theirs 8 ton of maize/silage going in, costed at 65 a ton fresh weight and circa 1 ton of meal and 1 bag of protected urea, total feed costs are 520 for forage 400 meal and 50 euro for urea, let's say 1000 euro....
Margin over feed not accounting for anything else machinery/labour/parlour running costs etc is 350-400 euro a day, its a loss making exercise
Nearly 5 cent shy of ornua returns including value added payment ….every coop should have it in them to pay 36/37 for November
For morale purposes alone, you'd think they'd all rise it 2 cent, alot of lads pretty disillusioned, feed reserves are getting low on farms too with wet second/third cuts been used up alot quicker than expected on account of low dm.
Nutrionist for the meal company i deal with is all ready doing feed budgets to get lads through his worst case had 35 days silage left last week if he stayed feeding it out without buffering, so a expensive spring could be in the pipeline depending on how the weather goes
Fairly severe measures been taken by Friesland campina
https://www.dutchnews.nl/2023/12/dairy-giant-frieslandcampina-cuts-1800-jobs-worldwide/
The problem is the rules around export have changed. Now its 2.4kgsN/cubic meter. Add in that on a lot of farms cow N rating has increased from 10-20 kgs/ year.
Even at 10 kgs/ cuw a farm of 50 HA that was previously slightly above 250 and now is in 220/ HA needs to export about 1250 cubic M of slurry or 250k gallons.
No farm can sustain that nutrient export. Another issue is finding farms to take it within a short distance of you
All the talk of exporting slurry as a solution by advisors /ministers etc is pie in the sky stuff for all the reasons you outlined there ….complete non runner for most …..
Yes the new rules are a pain but i think we will manage this year, exporting up to this year was great but it's more challenging this year for sure. Realistically we will have to come to terms with no more exporting or keep to a minimum and farm to what we have and make a go at it.
Is my understanding right that exported slurry is deemed to have less N/kg vs what is kept on farm?
I would not be too worried about tge N lost its tge P&K loss that is substantial.
No the issue was that on testing slurry on dairy farms it was found that the slurry was watered down a lot and this dropped the available N. This would be mainly because of uncovered tanks. There is an article on Agriland advocating slurry testing but it's probably too open to abuse
Must be something wrong with your figures. For the amount they are eating 23 litres is a poor return and your costing of 65 a ton for maize and grass silage is way too high.
Was talking to my Teagasc man a few weeks ago and he said that the slurry analysis coming back from farm is actually similar to the departments estimates for the slurry exporting.
On rented ground 65 a ton is about right, what are your cows doing at the minute for comparisonsake
Every 3rd load is tested here for free, but it does cause a good bit of paperwork. Government pays for the analysis. There can be a big difference between loads. It’s not the end of the world…and they’re either on 170kg or 140kg.
In other news, two youngsters turned up this morning for a ‘survey’ of farm buildings. Said it’s imperative to get it done because there’s a deadline from Brussels! Great that farmers are creating (and paying for!) the most lucrative of employment for youngsters.
That doesn't come within an asses roar of what I asked. I'm not worried about P&K. Or the N even. It was a general question. I'm trying to see why you have to export a multitude of what a single cow produces, if you are just a single cow over the limit. For example, you could cull the one cow or export 8/10/12 cows worth of slurry (whatever the number is). Export slurry is 2.4kgN/t. What is the figure if you spread the slurry on the farm? 5kgN/t?
You must export the whole year's slurry for the cow (8440 gallons) ..nkt just the 12 weeks of her slurry..
My calculated cost on that, by lorry, carrying it to a farmer in Midleton (35 miles) is €422..
A dairy cow on a grass based (grazing) system spends 6-9mts producing slurry whilst grazing. People seem to forget that there’s already 6-9mts of slurry being spread by the cows on the grazing platform.
They’ll come after the grazing platform eventually..for the reasons mentioned above.
@ this time of year we only have stale cows, milking 18 litres but not feeding meal, only silage and maize or wholecrop.
But anyway the Agri King figures quoted earlier for 30 litres were for fresh calved cows.
What’s your milk urea at?
Is it lactose you want. It is 4.77
No, milk urea.
Just to see the quality of your grass silage..I’m thinking that you could be short on protein, unless your grass silage is fair good.
