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Viability of small dairy farm
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Donald Trump wrote: »He'd be better off moving in with her than moving in with her fella
2021 man, anything goes once they have the land in their name and cash in their accounts
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Think your best option is to go do some ag course/ green cert , find a woman there with a heap of land (and no interest in farming) ... move straight in with her fella. Your calculations are nothing but dreams. You don’t know the true cost of things which is to be expected when you’re 17.
Am going doing the dairy herd management course, women with heaps of land are few and far between, dont think theres a single woman who doesnt have a younger/older brother that wouldnt take over the farm.
Getting some very mixed opinions, most say there was nothing wrong with my calculations and some say im completely wrong
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Go easy on the op,he's giving many here something to tap our screens at this couple of days. Covid lockdown,combined with January is doing maybe strange things. He's not afraid to talk,maybe even blabber which is something that can be good for anyone now & again.
Plenty of us hearing it anyway.
We all get strange ideas sometimes
I said the best thing would be to go on here and see what others think, roughly 80% think it'll work, 10% think maybe and 10% say definite no
We'd go insane if we didn't talk to anyone about my mad ideas 0 -
im not having a go at him, wish i had his ambition. hey, it might work, he could end up being very successful. or it mightn't, just suggesting he might need to recalculate his figures, get some life experience, and look into finding a woman or -man- who likes farming as his aspired lifestyle is very farm heavy. be a bad job is the SO is not into the smells, hardship and realities of farming.
These are rough figures tbf, they could be a lot higher as you say or who knows they could be lower, planning to go with a big dairy farmer over the summer possibly and get a good bit of experience working on other farms as theres only so much you can learn from sucklers
Twould be a woman that i'd go for, it would take some amount of land to make me go the other way
Women into farming are few and far between but they do exist, dairy farmer near me the wife be spreading slurry for him and everything, shes the woman every farmer dreams about 0 -
Siamsa Sessions wrote: »Just realised the OP is 17.
Fair play to him for such curiosity and interest at such a young age. Nothing at all wrong with throwing out figures and ideas. He's generated a great discussion on here for however many pages.
Having said that, 17 is no age to be thinking about a career. If you like cows, do some relief milking and earn a few quid. Then you can impress the local young wans splashing the cash around. Get a nice phone. Buy fancy clothes. Grow a beard or moustache. Try Guinness instead of cider or lager. Go for a run if you can't train with the local GAA, soccer, rugby, etc. club.
Do all those things now and more with it. Even if you don't want to. At least then, you won't be wondering what it would have been like when you're sick-sh*t of looking at cows, fighting with yer oul fella, and have very few options at 24.
Edit: bookmark this page or save the URL someplace. There's been some great ideas and insights shared. This is a valuable discussion that will still be useful in years to come. Don't lose it.
It has generated a lot of interest, thinking about going with a big dairy farmer for the summer, although there is a full year of working on farms with the dairy herd management course anyway so good bit of experience to be gained from that, the auld samsung i have now is doing away grand, no interest in fashion and trying my best with the beard and moustache :
Never had much interest in sports at all, only sport i was mad for when i was young was chasing cattle but youd never guess that by the size of me Might try and get in good shape and get rid of the belly
I might try and organise my group of friends to go off to NZ or Aus and go drawing silage
Good advice, i'll do that right away,
This discussion might not only be useful to me but also others I hope0 -
yosemitesam1 wrote: »This +100, gave up an awful lot in pursuit of getting myself setup between 18-25. Holidays, nights out, sport all put on hold. Was it worth it, probably not and had I have known what I was locking myself into, definitely wouldn't have done it.
Once you finish school/college, fulltime farming on your own doesn't be long becoming very lonely unless you keep putting the work into maintaining social life
Can be very isolating especially nowadays, especially for the auld fellas who go down the pub for a chat with each other. Are you full time farming yourself?
No interest in sport or holidays, my sort of holiday is going working on other farms, pretty much no nights out for the foreseeable future, dunno what im gonna do for my 18th 0 -
Women into farming are few and far between but they do exist, dairy farmer near me the wife be spreading slurry for him and everything, shes the woman every farmer dreams about
I don't know about that. I could give you a list of non-farming women that I wouldn't be kicking out of the bed to go down and spread a few loads of slurry in the morning.0 -
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Donald Trump wrote: »I don't know about that. I could give you a list of non-farming women that I wouldn't be kicking out of the bed to go down and spread a few loads of slurry in the morning.
Well c'mon wheres the list Hes not forcing her to do it btw, she does it because she loves farming too 0 -
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These are rough figures tbf, they could be a lot higher as you say or who knows they could be lower, planning to go with a big dairy farmer over the summer possibly and get a good bit of experience working on other farms as theres only so much you can learn from sucklers
Twould be a woman that i'd go for, it would take some amount of land to make me go the other way
Women into farming are few and far between but they do exist, dairy farmer near me the wife be spreading slurry for him and everything, shes the woman every farmer dreams about
you've to venture further afield to get a decent heifer. plenty of women into farming now, most are tidier operators than their male counterparts.0 -
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Well c'mon wheres the list Hes not forcing her to do it btw, she does it because she loves farming too
Hi OP!
Loving the thread. Getting people thinking and talking anyway.
I did my leaving two years ago and there was one lad in my year who spent the six years giving out about school, studying etc. His plan was to go to Ag College. Go out to Saudi Arabia as a farm manager and make a fortune. Come back and buy a big farm. He had it all thought out.
Anyway went to Ag College and after 2/3 weeks a few of the students (I think) were offered to move onto a level 6/7 degree in a Dairy Business style thing(I’m not sure ). He took the option with both hands after spending 6 years complaining about studying haha and he’ll go for a job as a saleman kinda thing. My point is that what you think you might like now and you’ll actually like are two different things.
Imo a mechanic is a dirty and often frustrating job and by 45 most of them are crippled. It might suit you to make that sort of decision if you grew up in a yard with a heap of machinery that was always breaking down but otherwise I’m afraid you mightn’t have much experience of it.Machine Diagnostics might be worth looking into as it’s cleaner, easier, better paid and is much more future proofed.
Your figures are way off also btw.
Assume €1500 per year per cow in milk for the first few years and maybe if you’re lucky you might get €600 for 9 month old weanlings. For 24 cows you’re talking €50000.
If your farm has been so lowly stocked for so long your grass is probably in ****e as all the bad grasses would be after taking over so don’t expect anything above 3.5% protein until the whole farm is reseeded
Also there ain’t many Fleckvieh heifers for sale in Ireland. The majority are imported so you’re talking €2300 a head. Btw they’re not all they’re made out to be. Good ones would barely match the best Holstein Friesian you could get milk wise and the calf value is only a very small thing in the modern dairy industry and it’s hard to get the big calf value without a lot of milk. Also at the mercy of calf dealers a lot of the time.
I assume you’re in the Irish Farming Discussion Group on Facebook and the amount of people crying on that page that they’ve devoted their life to the farm only for it to be sold from underneath them is frightening. Until you have a proper succession plan with your dad I wouldn’t be banking on anything.
Btw 300 points would get you into agriculture in CIT easily and if your family can’t afford it SUSI will cover a lot. If your family can afford it then you’re you’re not too badly off- it might be easier than handing over the farm straight away haha.
As other people mentioned look into relief milking and working for farmers in your spare time. They’ll teach you more than anyone on here will!!!
You said you’re not interested in making a fortune but when someone mentioned earlier pulling out of school and working for a farmer your first response was “oh I’ll easily get €10 an hour doing that”. That shows that you’re more interested in money than you’re letting on!!
Btw don’t be penny wise pound foolish with this getting into dairy before you’re 30. If you mind an off farm wage and build it up slowly and you’ll be able to build up to a wage that’ll easily get you into dairy much easier than your current means !!
I was stone mad for farming and still am but I’m doing a degree in Financial Maths.
I had considered doing Ag Science but did my work experience in Moorepark and that put me right off. Did three days there and it was incredibly worthwhile from the pov that it told me what I was letting myself in for.
Farming is all I know and my Facebook and Twitter feeds are full of farming stuff but I wanted to see a different side of the world besides always talking about cows and the weather.
During the summer spend three weeks at home on the farm without going anywhere and you’ll see what full time dairy farming is really like. You and your father are used to off farm jobs and meeting people everyday of the week. It’s a big change and you would t be long losing motivation when you get sick of doing the same thing everyday. There’s supposed to be a good career guidance Councillor in Bandon. I don’t know their name but a lot of people around me went to them and found them very helpful. A quick google may find plenty of them!
In conclusion, best of luck but I hope you see sense and try something different. The farm will always be there but your youth won’t be!!!0 -
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