Farming Chit Chat

Tipp Man wrote: »

That is rough luck 5Live

If you are underquota personally I would milk the crap out of them and if silage is plentiful dry them off and fatten them. Cow prices are high in the factory and i believe they will hold well into next year.

If you have good sized cows they should make a thousand Euro which should go a long way towards a replacement heifer cost

Make sure the one's you are keeping for the bull next year get very little to eat once dried off. You don't want them fat as pigs

Thanks tipp man. My cows come from a suckler base so a few will go as fat as pigs just by talking about grass.:D

I have loads of silage for once so they wont be short of feed but i'm not inclined to buy in. The threat of bringing something in with new animals just scares the bejaysus out of me but if they were going for a reasonable price it would be an option to look at.

Hard to call it bad luck though if there was something i should have been doing but wasnt.

When the results come back i will let you all know what showed up:o

whelan1 wrote: »

we have 2 farms , the dairy farm (mine) the suckler farm (my dads) now i have more or less eliminated ragworth on my farm by spraying, topping and pulling them ..His farm is a different story, we where thinking of buying 30 cull ewes to go over his farm , we have sparayed but tbh i dont have the time to pull all that are there... i used to have sheep about 15 years ago , do i need to get a flock number and would this sort out the problem?

ask your dvo, they will assign you a flock designator number ( or wtf it's called now, gave up trying to keep in touch) should be no problem as you (or your dad) have a herd no.

the sheep wont make too of an impression this year and i presume you would be selling in the spring

Ideally I think you need sheep all year round and rotate, ( I'm not the best qualified to answer this as we have never been without sheep during my life time)

If you didn't wish to get into breeding ewes the only alternative I could think of, would be to buying youngish ewe lambs and sell as breeding hoggets next year.

whelan1 wrote: »

the reason we where saying cull ewes is that sheep are mad prices this year...what would be best... tbh i had lambing ewes a few years ago and it was a disaster i didnt have the time for the sheep, cows and kids , store lambs are probably quite dear this year

Tbh, the best job for ragworth is ewes and lambs. Iirc the ewes eat the flowers and the lambs the leaves. 2 or 3 days would get rid of ragworth in about 5 acres with about 20 ewes, depending on how bad they were. If it was well fenced, it might be easier to let a bit of grazing for a few weeks if you could find someone interested in carrying a few ewes like that for a week every month.

One year, though, and it will be much easier to control after

5live wrote: »

Tbh, the best job for ragworth is ewes and lambs. Iirc the ewes eat the flowers and the lambs the leaves. 2 or 3 days would get rid of ragworth in about 5 acres with about 20 ewes, depending on how bad they were. If it was well fenced, it might be easier to let a bit of grazing for a few weeks if you could find someone interested in carrying a few ewes like that for a week every month.

One year, though, and it will be much easier to control after

We'd be in a kinda similar situation to snowman, sheep were always here. So no ragworth...

But I heard it was over the winter / in the springtime when they eat the ragworth down that it kills it for the next years regrowth...

whelan1 wrote: »

the reason we where saying cull ewes is that sheep are mad prices this year...what would be best... tbh i had lambing ewes a few years ago and it was a disaster i didnt have the time for the sheep, cows and kids , store lambs are probably quite dear this year

snowman707 wrote: »

If you didn't wish to get into breeding ewes the only alternative I could think of, would be to buying youngish ewe lambs and sell as breeding hoggets next year.

Store lambs are dear enough this year - I would get a few lambs in a few weeks time. See what the 1st Oct brings, wouldnt be in a rush to get em yet.
Ewe vs weathers - when do you want to sell em? If you want to sell em early, then weathers prob be cheaper, but you'd need to feed em to sell come March time, when they would be good money.
Ewes - you could leave em run over the winter, shouldnt need to feed em, and it would be better that they eat everything down... But you wouldnt be selling em as hoggets til August-ish. So you'd have em all summer... not sure if that'd suit...

Thats my two cents...

reilig wrote: »

€950 for a 9 month old is barely returning a profit to the breeder when you consider the cost of keeping the cow and the cost of bringing the calf to the size that will make €950.

Many suckler farmers are going to have tax problems this year - ie. they will have to pay tax because for the first time in a long time, they are actually going to make a profit!!

IMO suckler farmers deserve to make a profit as much as finishers do.

Your dead right reilig. Everyone deserves their cut....just some people are taking a bigger cut than others!! I heard in ennis last tuesday nice 300kg charolais bulls making 750 and 450kg charolais bulls making 850 to 900, Doesnt make any sense to me.

I think farmers work to a budget and they buy whatever they can afford, regardless of weight. They know prices are mad, but they'd rather be stocked some bit.

bogman_bass wrote: »

my pedigree parthenaise is starting to calve. Taking her sweet time as heifers do. Hope she is fit to do it herself because she told me in no uncertain terms that she doesn't want my help!

hope that goes well, they calf easy anyway, i had a weanling that went in calf and threw out pt calf practically by herself and she wasnt much over a year old...
looking forward to seeing pics

damn annoying...
Will you keep her if she's that hard handled at calving??

Good day at ploughin limousin beef was nice disappointed no Piedmontese there though