What are your thoughts on the fertiliser price s for 2022

Not at all, just an appropriate observation

how many of the poster boys for cover crop, direct drill are merchants, big sfp, big acres not relying on the grain cheque

For all your talk of dairy farmers throwing the toys out of the pram over nitrogen restrictions and N price grain crops won’t be worth talking about if fert can’t be for for them

Im not worried about N price, out of my control

nothing like a new challenge to get the brain thinking

Twould always be april before id pull the manure spreader out of the ditch.

I do always tell the kids here I am a big dairy farmer. I am 6'2" and I tell them the average dairy farmer is 5'10" so I must be big.

I would also advise people to feed more concentrates or buy maize silage if you can especially if you have good silage. You could really stretch the grass easily and not take a hit with yield. Buffer feed the cows untill May if you have too. I'm planning on grazing the cows untill December and saving the silage for the beginning of the year, that way if fertilizer is in short demand i'll have fodder untill may. Spread slurry in Feb and march or whenever temps go up.

That’s about all you can do. If everyone had been working like that these last few years things would be in a much better place.

Good advice.

Maize, beet, wholecrop etc have the ability to cushion against meal price and stretch grazing rotation. With barley well north of €200/t fodder crops etc become quite attractive…not to mention how important they can be when the grass doesn’t grow. A fodder crisis, by the law of averages, can’t be too far away either.

Cows first cut is being planted now. 15kg/ha of clover DD into maize stubble. No fert whatsoever. It should yield somewhere between 2.5 and 5.5tDM/ha. Then maize will be planted directly afterwards, again with no fertilizer whatsoever. Clover seed cost €19.6/ha plus the cost of drilling and rolling. Maize seed will cost around €65-85/ha plus the cost of planting & herbicide. Herbicide for maize is around €25/ha. Maize should yield around 20-22t/ha. That’s how we roll here..

👍👍tbf dwag lots of us are doing variations of what I outlined above

A sizeable farm in south Wexford went dairy a few years ago because the yields kept dropping following P recks advice

soil type did not suit it, it needed the plough

Whole crop wheat won't be cheap either, 180 units ,chemicals all increasing and contractors starting to look for increases due to fuel and machinery costs rocketing

No store to beef. The reason I went was because it's was mostly Friesian calves. A few stupid things stood out to me. They were good to do the calves and get them to decent weight at 18-20 months. The system like all present calf to beef systems is trying to get calves finished at 20 ish months.

This lad sold the HE&AA stores at 18 months. He finished as many Friesians as he could off grass. I think the averaged 270 ish kgs That makes sense. He will do ok this and last Autumn as store and beef prices were not substantially below mid summer prices.

More FR's were slaughtered out of the shed. These averaged around 300 ish kg. All research is showing that feeding costs exceed weight gained. The last of the FR would have been mostly P type cattle IMO if they hung the best of them. These were slaughtered during May at about an average weight of 310-315 kgs at about 11-1150 euro of I remember right. These would have been great cattle in July/ August, another 2-3 months grass would have had them killing 360+ kgs average. They have hit 1400-1450 euro. The ones killed out of shed would have probably killed around that weight in June/ July and the better confirmation would have got them into over 1450 as well.

It was all straight down the track with Teagasc. Having said that I rang my own advisor after it and he was a bit perturbed about the rate of N applied and he taught as well the bullocks slaughered in May should have been carried further.

Dawg, a few points first we are not really a tillage country. Oats is about the only thing that grows well without excessive sprays and it is not a great feed cereal. I do not have a problem with a grass based system. There is two issues, pushing very high stocking rates on midsized platforms to get scale. This pushes you into having to keep grass growing and you end up with a large amount of bales off paddocks. Milk has managed to sustain this cost. Beef cannot.

The biggest problem may well be the availability of fertlizer not the price of it. I would not assume that feedlot type operations have all there feedstuff sitting in the yards at present. I think quite the opposite. A lot of them depend on cashflow to keep going and but an awful lot of there requirements 4-8 weeks in advance. Ya some may have barns of straw and pits of maize silage. However a lot of them get it straight from importers. If fertlizer is very scarce next spring and crops are not planted, the price of grain will rise exponentially as merchants, farmers and importers store it for the longterm price rise.

Another question is if we go down the tillage route at what stage will the golden colour go out of the butter.

Priced clover here Dawg it's €10 a kg that's €150 a hectare plus direct drilling cost . Also where are you getting your p and k's from? Are you spreading slurry or dung on it?

Duck shite apparently

Short term annual clover seed (crimson etc) is cheaper than white clover

There is no harm in ringing suppliers but you can expect that they will tell you that they have no idea what prices will be and don't know what supply volume will be. They will take your order for whatever quantity you want but will not commit on price and will not guarantee volume.

Suppliers get a margin for supplying a sales and distribution service to manufacturer. Their margin will be pretty constant no matter sales price. They do not make killings with high prices or lose their shirts with low prices. The manufacturer manages manufacturing inputs and decides on market prices. Supplier will not take risks like committing to prices \ volumes unless their supplier (i.e. manufacturer) does likewise. I doubt that manufacturers are doing this with current gas prices \ shut plants