Dairy Chitchat 4, an udder new thread.

GrasstoMilk

Gawddawggonnit wrote: »

We buy our butter from a lad milking very few cows. He makes his own butter and salt (he’s by the sea) and he charges €16/kg this year. He can’t produce enough for demand. He sends a text when a batch is made and if you don’t get it that very day it’ll be sold out. Nicest butter I’ve ever eaten.

You must have forgotten what kerrygold tastes like

atlantic mist

50/60c a litre are very round figures...anyone verify current price glenisk is paying??

market for organics is too small in ireland, eu and worldwide

if there was a large enough market with the consumer willing to pay the extra cost and allow the primary producer a margin over cost wed all be at it

only difference at this stage between organic and conventional is nitrogen....drugs ok just longer withdrawl periods.... the drugs to me makes a mockery of the idea of organics

Mooooo

Gawddawggonnit wrote: »

Why not?

50-60cpl is not to be sneezed at.

Plenty market there for organic dairy, but I would think that there’s little demand for organic milk powder? The powers that be don’t want such tomfoolery taking off either...less fert, less inputs etc wouldn’t really suit the industry.

Any new entrants here are mostly going for the organic option. The extra 5cpl for the first 5yrs is attractive also.
If I’d nothing only dairy I’d certainly be organic. The only real loss is artificial fert and that’s easy enough to cope with. No difference in antibiotics (etc) use also.

* Plenty talk about once a day milking, but no push for organic...why?

Again apply you're thinking to doing it here, not in France. A certain amount could convert, but the scale of our dairy in relation our population, and consumers would mean prices would revert to conventional or less very fast as well as a lot of farms would lack the scale of land to make an adequate profit from organic Already seen in beef re prices. Cutting costs is all well and good but wont make much difference if financial output is also affected
Oad is a lifestyle not a profit metric.

Siamsa Sessions

atlantic mist wrote: »

50/60c a litre are very round figures...anyone verify current price glenisk is paying??

market for organics is too small in ireland, eu and worldwide

if there was a large enough market with the consumer willing to pay the extra cost and allow the primary producer a margin over cost wed all be at it

only difference at this stage between organic and conventional is nitrogen....drugs ok just longer withdrawl periods.... the drugs to me makes a mockery of the idea of organics

If more converted to organic it’d increase supply and reduce price. By definition it can only be a niche market unless food in general starts to rise in price and the supermarkets point consumers towards it coz they can make a big margin on it.

I’d consider organic as a potential new dairy entrant but it’s the extra bureaucracy that’s putting me off.

K.G.

Steady on lads how many of these aspirational documents have we seen in the past.we will have to tweak what we re doing as we go along.and dont forget things dont be long changing when they have to and that works both ways

green daries

K.G. wrote: »

Steady on lads how many of these aspirational documents have we seen in the past.we will have to tweak what we re doing as we go along.and dont forget things dont be long changing when they have to and that works both ways

If half the changes being talked about across the industry are brought in or implemented and enforced we will be one step away from being organic

Gawddawggonnit

GrasstoMilk wrote: »

You must have forgotten what kerrygold tastes like

I haven’t forgotten at all but it can’t be bought here...anyhow yer mans butter is nicer. Cows are grazed on the marshes that are full of wild flowers and herbs. Sometimes if we’ve Irish visitors they get a bit concerned about the large salt crystals in the butter, but they love it once it’s explained to them.

**Imagine the premium that organic Kerrygold would command.

Gawddawggonnit

atlantic mist wrote: »

only difference at this stage between organic and conventional is nitrogen....drugs ok just longer withdrawl periods.... the drugs to me makes a mockery of the idea of organics

+1 It’s a joke.
The only true organics are cereals and veg.

Gawddawggonnit

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

There seems to be very little appetite for trying something new or experimenting, unless it's pretty much 100% parcelled up and ready to go but by that stage it's far too late

Absolutely correct.

Gawddawggonnit

Mooooo wrote: »

Again apply you're thinking to doing it here, not in France. A certain amount could convert, but the scale of our dairy in relation our population, and consumers would mean prices would revert to conventional or less very fast as well as a lot of farms would lack the scale of land to make an adequate profit from organic Already seen in beef re prices. Cutting costs is all well and good but wont make much difference if financial output is also affected
Oad is a lifestyle not a profit metric.

Hard to disagree with you...but it’s NOT illegal to produce a range of products other than milk powder/industrial cheese. There’s hundreds of millions of consumers in the Eu that want to buy organic dairy, just not what Ireland produces...building milk dryers isn’t exactly looking outside the box. It’s lazy marketing, is all.

Water John

Drug use is quite limited in terms of antibiotics in organic. Only once in 12 months, repeat and animal becomes conventional.
Any bought in, supplementary feed to the grass sward would be dear.
50c/l was good when conventional was below 30c/l, it would need to move up now. Glenisk TMK pay a flat price. There are 61 organic dairy farmers in the country.

Birdnuts

Gawddawggonnit wrote: »

Hard to disagree with you...but it’s NOT illegal to produce a range of products other than milk powder/industrial cheese. airyThere’s hundreds of millions of consumers in the Eu that want to buy organic d, just not what Ireland produces...building milk dryers isn’t exactly looking outside the box. It’s lazy marketing, is all.

Yeah - we are missing a trick here in Ireland with the tunnel vision approach of the DAFM,Teagasc etc. to such things. It was reported in the UK farming press a few weeks ago that organic produce consumption is at an all time high and has seen continued growth during the pandemic.

Water John

No one in Ireland makes organic cheddar in Ireland, 27 manufacturers in the UK, a few fairly large, like, Wyke Farms who supply Lidl.
You have Hay Milk and Hay Milk Cheese in Germany and Austria. The EU is the market.
A bit of variation would be a good thing here. Fair play to the few who milk the goats and sheep.

Injuryprone

Gawddawggonnit wrote: »

Hard to disagree with you...but it’s NOT illegal to produce a range of products other than milk powder/industrial cheese. There’s hundreds of millions of consumers in the Eu that want to buy organic dairy, just not what Ireland produces...building milk dryers isn’t exactly looking outside the box. It’s lazy marketing, is all.

Well given that the total population of the EU is 450m, I think you may be overestimating the market just a slight bit! A little bit of research tells me that Germany is the biggest organic market at present with a whopping 5% of food consumed being organic. It's fairly nieve imho to believe that a niche industry is a solution for the more conventional producers

timple23

Gawddawggonnit wrote: »

* Plenty talk about once a day milking, but no push for organic...why?

Why? Because who advocates a low input system these days? The fertilizer man wants you at a higher stocking rate and bank man wants you pouring concrete.

No one wants you reducing inputs as its less money for them.

K.G.

90%of consumers will reply to survey that they would like to buy organic/natural/low carbon or what ever tag line you want to on things.when they walk into the shop 90 % will buy the cheapest s##t they can get.

blackdog1

Anyone read what Aidan Brennan wrote in the back page of the journal? basically said anyone trying to get you to buy ai straws based on production figure was either delusional or try to pull a fast one on you.... don't know how he got away with printing that. On another note Dawg you might be able to answer this for me?. According to a Teagasc advisor i was talking to there is talks about raising the nitrogen limit of a cow based on her production figures i.e a cow doing 8000 litres will be 92 kg/n/ha and lower producers will be 89kgs. etc . he said the French were already doing this...??

straight

blackdog1 wrote: »

Anyone read what Aidan Brennan wrote in the back page of the journal? basically said anyone trying to get you to buy ai straws based on production figure was either delusional or try to pull a fast one on you.... don't know how he got away with printing that. On another note Dawg you might be able to answer this for me?. According to a Teagasc advisor i was talking to there is talks about raising the nitrogen limit of a cow based on her production figures i.e a cow doing 8000 litres will be 92 kg/n/ha and lower producers will be 89kgs. etc . he said the French were already doing this...??

Will we make the sucklers 95 so. What about a big stock bull

Say my name

straight wrote: »

Will we make the sucklers 95 so. What about a big stock bull

I read comments on Twitter from some of these environmentalists who are in the know and it was reported that Nitrate regulation emissions would be tied to milk yield.
I assumed it was a national figure though not back to individual farms.

mahoney_j

blackdog1 wrote: »

Anyone read what Aidan Brennan wrote in the back page of the journal? basically said anyone trying to get you to buy ai straws based on production figure was either delusional or try to pull a fast one on you.... don't know how he got away with printing that. On another note Dawg you might be able to answer this for me?. According to a Teagasc advisor i was talking to there is talks about raising the nitrogen limit of a cow based on her production figures i.e a cow doing 8000 litres will be 92 kg/n/ha and lower producers will be 89kgs. etc . he said the French were already doing this...??

Read it ,ball of stutter and just shovelling his (biased)opinion .he must think were thick or something that we know nothing about picking bulls gone beyond caring about cow type etc but me may as well of just said we should all be breeding small framed jex or x bred type ainmals

blackdog1

mahoney_j wrote: »

Read it ,ball of stutter and just shovelling his (biased)opinion .he must think were thick or something that we know nothing about picking bulls gone beyond caring about cow type etc but me may as well of just said we should all be breeding small framed jex or x bred type ainmals

Farmers are obviously looking at higher producing sires, so much so it seems that they have resorted to giving them a lecturing to in the national farming paper..:):D

straight

blackdog1 wrote: »

Farmers are obviously looking at higher producing sires, so much so it seems that they have resorted to giving them a lecturing to in the national farming paper..:):D

I thought they had realised their mistake of pushing the Jersey cross for years.

GrasstoMilk

straight wrote: »

I thought they had realised their mistake of pushing the Jersey cross for years.

We followed the advice here, don't regret it one bit
We have switched to high ebi hol cow now because we feel it can give us more milk solids, same as 20 years ago when we used JE and NR

A discussion group member said one time that there's no right or wrong way to breed, you do as you see fit at the time and he's very correct

straight

GrasstoMilk wrote: »

We followed the advice here, don't regret it one bit
We have switched to high ebi hol cow now because we feel it can give us more milk solids, same as 20 years ago when we used JE and NR

A discussion group member said one time that there's no right or wrong way to breed, you do as you see fit at the time and he's very correct

I agree. There is no right or wrong way. I always say there is a cow to suit everybody and its just a matter of choosing which one you want.

yosemitesam1

Mooooo wrote: »

Again apply you're thinking to doing it here, not in France. A certain amount could convert, but the scale of our dairy in relation our population, and consumers would mean prices would revert to conventional or less very fast as well as a lot of farms would lack the scale of land to make an adequate profit from organic Already seen in beef re prices. Cutting costs is all well and good but wont make much difference if financial output is also affected
Oad is a lifestyle not a profit metric.

Too often people dismiss the potential for change based on whether or not the whole industry can make that change at once. The real opportunities are for small nimble producers doing things very well aiming for the very top of the market
If you go for that, what the rest of the industry is doing is not too important as you're no longer really in the same market

Mooooo

yosemitesam1 wrote: »

Too often people dismiss the potential for change based on whether or not the whole industry can make that change at once. The real opportunities are for small nimble producers doing things very well aiming for the very top of the market
If you go for that, what the rest of the industry is doing is not too important as you're no longer really in the same market

So as I said above, the majority of farms would be in trouble. Survival of the few.

yosemitesam1

Mooooo wrote: »

So as I said above, the majority of farms would be in trouble. Survival of the few.

Just make sure you're one of the few...

blackdog1

GrasstoMilk wrote: »

We followed the advice here, don't regret it one bit
We have switched to high ebi hol cow now because we feel it can give us more milk solids, same as 20 years ago when we used JE and NR

A discussion group member said one time that there's no right or wrong way to breed, you do as you see fit at the time and he's very correct

Big difference is teagasc and the national paper are not actively attacking your cow type or trying to influence the government on climate advice that affects the stocking rate of your farm. In fact they are doing the opposite, they are nailing there flag to the high ebi mast and trying to throw the higher producing cows under the bus to save their skin because they know if derogation goes ebi is basically finished.

green daries

blackdog1 wrote: »

Big difference is teagasc and the national paper are not actively attacking your cow type or trying to influence the government on climate advice that affects the stocking rate of your farm. In fact they are doing the opposite, they are nailing there flag to the high ebi mast and trying to throw the higher producing cows under the bus to save their skin because they know if derogation goes ebi is basically finished.

100%This what they're doing and This is the plan
But you would have to wonder why all of a sudden lads are looking for milky bulls 🀔

mahoney_j

green daries wrote: »

100%This what they're doing and This is the plan
But you would have to wonder why all of a sudden lads are looking for milky bulls 🀔

Seen the quite obvious flaws lots of us have been saying are there with breeding purely on ebi .....farmers aren’t thick and can see thru the spin that’s put out there by likes of Brennan etc ,I know some just leave it to Ai man or company to pick there bulls ,majority don’t