Dairy Chitchat 4, an udder new thread.

after reading all of that I’d strongly suggest you leaving the farm altogether and doing an apprenticeship. You’re young but by god the years don’t be long going by and the next 10 will fly by which time your chance of starting an apprenticeship or doing anything else will probably be 1000 times harder. Leave, learn a trade, no matter what trade it is you’ll learn stuff that you’ll use the rest of your life whether it’s on or off the farm. The father and grandfather might change their tune after a few years of not having a young lad flying around the place and taking orders.

I could paper a house with correspondence from them over the years but I never came across a situation where you couldn’t send animals directly to slaughter.
Why are they imposing that on you ?

Id be booking a ticket to Australia, if I was in your shoes, you'll walk into a 2ic, assistant manager job dairying on a 50-70k plus euro salary, with house and usually jeep included, if you find the right farm, Victoria around the gippsland is a great spot, very close to Melbourne and lots of nice town dotted around the main dairying areas...

What age is your grand-father/father, they are living in a bubble by the sounds of things and a way of life that's died out in most yards

You might be right about the building game but it’s horses for courses, I certainly wouldn’t advise anyone to go into shuttering, steelfixing block laying or plastering, would you mind saying what the off farm work / job is?

that’s fair enough, fair play to you that’s great going

i am 54 years old and only got my little garden last year ,my mother would not let go,place is falling down ,i should have moved on at the start, pouring concrete this year when its all too late but i said i would give myself some comfort in my last few years,

Maybe so could be a plan , grandfather 93 father early 60s , yes its a different thinking in their minds

Does anyone here use a draminski mastitis detector or are they worth the money. CMT is slow and I have found it gives me cows that might only be 300 or so. The actual reading given digitally instantly would be handy if it worked.

If it’s any consolation to you it’s the exact same if not worse on nearly every other farm in the country 😂😂

In another few years the 2 bosses you have could both be long dead and forgotten about

If you were to go away, get a job on a building site on €50K/year, meet a girl with some sort of job of similar money, buy a house together or do one up or whatever - the day will dawn on them at home that you don’t need them or their farm etc and they’ll come crawling back

A lot of all this depends on whether you’re an only son or not I suppose. If you’re an only son you have them over the barrel altogether

Id try and do mediation first, get in contact with teagasc/a good succession advisor, map out what you want to happen in the next 3 years, I.e farm transfered over, provisions made for a income the farm can afford to pay your father/grandfather etc, if they both spit the dummy out, refuse, on wont budge, id get a plane ticket like suggested and leave them too it...

If the proposed changes of retirement age farmers not receiving cap payments go through , you could approach your father, from the prospective the lands going to have to go into your name to draw payments be it a long-term lease our transfer etc, if he's still not budging just walk away while you have a chance to start over when still in your 20's

I bought this this morning based on your recommendation.

The salesteam rang after that the online price had just reduced by 40 euro this morning and i overpaid. So i could either take the refund or equivalent buy in store. I took the refund. They could have let that slip by.

So honest of them that I had to post that.

Will definitely be shopping there again. First time dealing with them. If I ever meet you @jaymla627 I owe you a pint.

Never got any samples tested for scc but a 5-6 would be circa 300-400 i reckon, the bad cases here where all 10 plus, scc was 350-400, the week before I got it, I tested the entire herd and found a couple of cows 10 plus on 2 plus spins, culled these straight away and another 3 where 10 plus on one quarter, I just stopped milking the bad quarters. Scc drop down to 150 once I had the above done within a week, and touchwood haven't had any spikes above 230 scc since, removing the chronically infected cows on multiple spins and drying of the quarters on the others, meant cross-infection cases stopped over-night

It would be nice of course to head off and see the world, night clubs, riding, drugs ect.

But the problem is, you are going to have to do the work sometime. If he heads off working or travelling, does he expect a 93 yr old or a lad in his sixties to keep things up to date.

A few lads here are complaining how they got the place and they have had to put loads of money and work to modernise things. So, if you want a break from the farm, don't expect it to be in tip/top condition when you come back.

30k and being housed and fed ain't bad, that would be 40k if you were renting. Remember eventually he will get the place. Back in my time I would have to ask for a few pounds at the weekends when I was going out.

Taking over from the older generation has always been a struggle. There has always been a clash of ideas. It might be that you should be forcefull with your ideas.