new entrant to Milking

jfh

Hi All, stumbled across this forum and would like your opinion on the quota available for new entrants to dairy farming. is there a future in dairy farming? milk prices are bound to get good again?

djmc

Milk prices will get good again
Next spring could be a good time to buy dairy stock as prices are falling by the week.
As for getting into dairying it depends how much you have to borrow and therefore repay have you a lot of land milking parlour slatted house yards etc.
I wouldnt borrow a few hundred grand and expect milking 50 cows to pay it back.
If you have the equipment already and willing to work at it 7 days a week go for it but you wont make money at current prices

djmc

djmc wrote: »

As for getting into dairying it depends how much you have to borrow and therefore repay have you a lot of land milking parlour slatted house yards etc.
I wouldnt borrow a few hundred grand and expect milking 50 cows to pay it back.
If you have the equipment already and willing to work at it 7 days a week go for it but you wont make money at current prices

Would agree. If you don't have the equipment already, it'll take you a long time to get your money back. You could easily spend 2 hundred grand on a parlour alone, especially if you wanted to go big.

jfh

thanks for the reply djmc, i agree with you on the fact that one would have to be in it bigtime to make any money.

jfh

thanks for the reply djmc, i agree with you on the fact that one would have to be in it bigtime to make any money.

mooverlive

have been thinking about this today and my advise is to work on a dairy farm for the rest of the year with no days off no sundays nothing off.after this u still think u wanna do it go for it , but u will need certain amount of structures on the farm eg accomadation and shed to put milking machine into , u could probably buy a good secondhand milking machine prety cheap , i think u might b spoiled for choice next spring lots of guys around me thinking of walking away. best of luck ps the grass always looks greener on the other side

blue5000

thats good advice from mooverline, better still go work on an autumn calving herd for the rest of the year, you learn a lot more when things are busy. Prices should improve next year, but I think we are going to see a lot more boom bust cycles in dairying and a lot of people getting out. If you still want to go for it at the end of the year a partnership with an older established person with yard etc already built up might be a good way to go, with you owning the cows (or some of them anyway) after 5 years. I got out of it 3 years ago and have no regrets, had 40k gal quota and couldn't see a way to expand.

scaniaman

That's good advice from the other lads. A lot depends on your land type a lot to be said for the dry ground. The price will improve though not looking great to the end of first quarter next year. I 've 60'000 gallons of quota and not much hope of expanding as i'm landlocked by other good farmers. 60k gallons has no repayment capacity this year i'm paying interest only and that's a struggle. Don't be afraid to ask advice . Best of luck whatever you decide.

_Skitso_

You say one would need to be of scale to survive. What is that scale??
For example a farm with potential to milk 50 cows should not borrow 300 thousand, but talking on bigger numbers, like a farm that could carry 100 cows and upwards. is that still small??