It has to be a solely irish mentality the above thinking, adult childern with zero intrest, heading for their 60's and they must be in bother thats why their selling….
Dairying is a generational game, if you havent a successor, youll literally end up in a early grave dairying full tilt past your mid 50's, was chatting a good family friend recently who works in the industry and he mentioned the story about the man that dropped dead late 50"s putting collars on cows up around westmeath , and including the above man out of a photo took at a wedding a couple of years ago of 5 dairy farmers together late 50's at the time 4 out of the 5 have passed away….
Thats alot sadder story than the above to be honest especially with current returns from it at the mintue
Don't know about Twitter but farming groups on Facebook have turned into conspiracy theory groups more about cloud seeding and chem trails than farming these days.
Local dairy farmer in his 60's decided to change to drystock, he said he is sorry he did not do it 5ish years earlier. He is doing calf to store. He had a fear of not having enough to live if he changed
Young lad locally ( he is in his early 30's so not young really) after taking over a place, after three years milking he is thinking of changing over to drystock completely and get a job. His father is against it. As he not be full time farming.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. It fairly similar with a lot of dairy farmers. They find it hard to release money to accommodate lifestyle. If anybody is perceived to make a profit out off them,( slurry, zero grazing, cutting for bales etc) they feel they must take over doing it themselves. Often children ( and this can be a general farming issue not just dairying) are bought up that every pound is a prisoner maybe even every penny.
You would manage a farm into your 70's with the right attitude
Without payments how many calves would one have to keep to leave 40k profit in a calf to store operation in your opinion?
I'm grazing stuff like that now in the first rotation. Not pushing the cows to clean it out but hoping they will clean it in the next round. Teagasc won't allow me to "correct mechanically".
I regret not retiring earlier. even if the farmer in the example didn't get 40000, so what, can't he retire and sell/lease if it doesn't work out.
The joke about it being child abuse to give someone a farm is coming very real now
The arse has fallen out out of growth here, back buffer feeding silage tomorrow
I’m just curious, if you could earn close enough to 40k without payments why wouldn’t more to turn to dry stock
Ya, the guide price seems fair enough. But the house looks like an ancient money pit and the yard is only average. Auctioneer saying that they are milking 150 cows is unrealistic.
Where a farmer has children I never think it’s right for him to sell the farm if he inherited it himself. I’ve never seen it to benefit the family in the long run. Especially nowadays with so many options for leasing
I dont know if you heard about it Bass but there is a bit of a shortage of labour for farmers to avail of.
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What do you reckon on a 250 acre farm for arguementsake, milking 170 cows, keeping replacement heifers, with all slurry/fert/silage/etc contracted out would the costs per litre be?
I have the figures worked out, you should take a stab at it, would maybe make you see why alot of machinery work is done in-house, and thats before the issue of actually getting a contractor when you need them
I fully agree. I don't mind if mine are not interested in farming but it will be passed on to them one way or the other anyway. Bit pf respect for all the people that went before me like.
with owned land calf to beef farmers probably have 2-300€ a hd out of it. You’d need a fair few hd to make it a full time gig. I’d much rather milk cows and have my 1000€ /hd out of it.
Back milking this morning after my break. Yeah spring was shite weather wise but 2.5 hours to bring cows in and milk, really simple when all cows are calved and heifers trained and you haven’t to go gather the fresh bunch from the calving pen. Relief Milker in the afternoon, it’s not that bad
you by your own admission nearly ended up killing yourself, due to it been spring and the pressure on etc no time for a doctor/hospitial and now its all sunny uplands and rainbows again…
If the above hasnt given you a reality check noting will
With the 160 acres they could lease it out tax free and bring in about €50,000/year plus I presume they’d have the contributory pension which between the married couple would be close to €30,000/year. That’s €80,000/year and a very small tax bill out of it and even if their own children aren’t interested they could have a grandchild in 15 years time ready to take it over. It’s fine for someone to sell land to buy other land but besides that I think it’s very unfair to those that come after and saying the kids aren’t interested is a cop out IMHO
While I agree with that, I know of 3 farming families where the father was farming, didn't hand over even any responsibility to the interested kids, who then went on to get outside jobs. Farms now all leased out pulling in similar figures. In one case, the daughter is mad to take over but the father won't sign it over cos he'd lose out on the lease money and doesn't think his daughter would be able to run the place.
He must have it down to 15 cent now be 12 when the growth gets going.......
it was silliness on my part more than just not wanting to go. I got checked over that evening and was told I was fine. When I left I left and the show still ran
what do you value your time at tho jay ….you’ve big money tied up in machinery repairs and mantinance etc …3 very good reliable contractors do lot of work for me ….only slurry I do is odd few loads of parlour washings ….tank is 2500 gallon no finance owed …first 2 rounds fertiliser contracted out I have 1.5 tonne kvernlsnd spreader no finance owed and spread from now on myself …10 foot krone mower on finance changed every 3 years cut all my own silage bar first cut pit ….krone Tedder which I do all my tedding with ….contractor with melted hails to yard and I stack ….mower and Tedder crucial for me as like to take light quality cuts so can cut when suits
Actually done the sums on it re getting contractors to do 90% of the work here again, have the invoices/costings from 2018 when 90% of the work was done by a contractor, and its not good reading, the figure in 2018 would be nearly double present day
not having a go grass but jay is right here …and this isn’t first spell out of action you e had
Its all paid for this year bar the new loader, to be honest the ground im on you just cant let in someone that dosent know the ground its tricky to say the least and this year would be unworkable if you didnt know where to stay out of
The thing about having your own gear the do the work is in a bad year you don't have the cash outflow provided you actually own the equipment without finance payments. In a good year you could upgrade something and pay for it.
I cant understand the logic of buying machinery on finance when the contractor would have done it for the same or less cost.
You often see the farming interest skip a generation. Besides Ireland seems to be going well in other industries at the moment but who knows what can happen in 10 or 20 years. Some old lads are let up the garden path about selling out and what can they do with the money that’s a safe investment.
About 50, you probably need about 70ish acres
Because too many get focused on out put not on profit, as well its all about discipline and having a back up fund that is there when you need it.
Yes there is and that is why you optomise the system using contractors
The reality is Jay if I had 250 acres, I have only 70-100 cows( decent ones) and the rest woukd be drystock. I be trying to hammer the cpl down to low 20's. ( store wintering costs back below a euro a day this winter).
A decent calf to beef on owned land and not needing significant capital investment, would be 800/ unit.
I'd agree with most of what you said apart from the €800 profit in calf-to-beef. You might make that this year when beef price is good, but price could drop and even long-term operators might be back to €200-300 then.
Plus, any small capital investment could quickly add €50/animal to costs too.
will you go away
I’ve never once complained about dairying being tough or “can’t get labour”. Me being in hospital was down to an unfortunate situation. I did get looked at when the incident happened and I was told I was fine. The whole place still ran away with out me thanks to very good help
That is a very important point that alot of people don't seem to understand or appreciate
