No quitten we're whelan on to chitchat 11

Drugs is rampant. You might be surprised who's using and who's selling. Neither are the stereo typical druggy. Some lads have came up in the world very quickly in the last few years and it couldn't have been hard work maybe they won the lotto.

Prominent GAA man in Enniscorthy being burgled?

Not sure on that one.

But in the last few days it's rife in the area.

Behind a paywall but maybe a spare copy of the farming indo might be going around.

Seems interesting..pre paywall.

I’ll probably get arrested for but yesterdays paper so old news. Turning one of Ireland's worst weeds into a cash crop that can boost animal health

For 20 years PJ Larkin got paid to remove invasive Japanese knotweed… then he learned how to distil it into a tonic for cattle

A Roscommon farmer has discovered a way to transform one of Ireland's most aggressive invasive species into a health tonic for cattle.

Through his company, Eco-Weed, PJ Larkin has been removing Japanese knotweed from properties around Ireland for more than 20 years.

Separate from this work, he has also been providing farmers with apple cider vinegar infused with herbs, which they use as a high nutrient supplement for cattle.

Five years ago, PJ began to combine these two enterprises, soaking roots of knotweed in vinegar to extract its vitamins and minerals.

Japanese knotweed has been used in medicine in Asia for hundreds of years. Its roots contain high levels of two chemicals — resveratrol and emodin — which are said to produce a number of health benefits in humans, including acting as an anti-inflammatory, regulating blood pressure and promoting healthy digestion.

In 2017, PJ began experimenting with knotweed root as a supplement for cattle. He says that knotweed-infused apple cider vinegar has proved a valuable medicine for cattle, and is particularly effective in tackling mastitis and calf scour, as well as improving fertility.

Moonshine

He now supplies a number of farmers in Galway, Clare and Roscommon with what he calls Moonshine.

"We'd been supplying cider vinegar for a number of years and adding different herbs to it to improve the immune system,” he says.

"I had known for a long time that Japanese knotweed has very strong properties for promoting human health. This is a practice which is centuries old in Asia, but we didn't know about it over here.

"We have been selling apple cider vinegar as a supplement for cattle for years now. Different herbs are added to the apple cider vinegar in different parts of the world, in an effort to boost the immune system of the cattle and as a cure for mastitis.

"So a few years ago, we started experimenting with a few different things to see which ones would produce the best results. We tried the Japanese knotweed and we were amazed at the results.”

PJ says farmers will generally see a two-thirds reduction in their vet bills when they start using the infused vinegar.

Leading vets, though, stress that this sort of product should not be seen as a viable replacement for "proper medicine”.

PJ continues: "Farmers use it in different ways. Some farmers add it to the animals' feed, while others put it into their drinking water. You can get slow-release dispensers to control how much goes in.

"Other farmers dose the animals with it three days a month or give it into a bowl for them — generally the cattle love to drink it.

"The immune system is linked to so much of the illness that affects cattle. If a farmer sees the cell count start to creep up for a cow, and feels it might be starting to get mastitis, that is the ideal time to get them.

"If they treat them early with the cider vinegar and Japanese knotweed, it is usually enough to stop the infection from getting worse. It certainly makes the infections less severe and stops them from lasting as long.

"There are always cases which are too far gone. The best you can hope for with them is that the mixture will allow you to keep milking them for that season before you cull them.

"It has also had good results when it comes to fertility. Some of the AI men were recommending apple cider vinegar to farmers for cows who were in repeat, as a way of boosting the chances of the cow carrying a calf.

"It does seem to make a big difference when it comes to fertility. In cows, as in all animals, if the body is deficient in nutrients, the body can cancel the pregnancy. The mixture can help with that.

"It's also been great for scour. When you give Moonshine to calves it prevents scour as you are inoculating them with good gut bacteria.

"It's a good all-round health booster. The farmers who are using it are delighted with the effects. They are looking at their vet bills coming down to a third of what they were originally.

"It's like a bank account — if you know you are going to have heavy withdrawals at some stage in the month, it's a good idea to be topping up the account every week.

"You are topping up the animal's immune system when you know they have stresses on their body coming up, whether that is going into calf or whatever. A small amount of it given regularly seems to work wonders.”

The process of extracting nutrients from knotweed root is a slow and careful one, and there are strict regulations against transporting any parts of viable Japanese knotweed plants in Ireland, to prevent its spread.

The root must be dug and dissolved on-site — which can take about a month to complete — and all remaining traces of the plant must be fully incinerated.

"We start off by cutting up the root and soaking it in apple cider vinegar, which dissolves much of it and extracts the resveratrol, the chemical which makes knotweed so resilient and hard to kill,” says PJ.

"If you look at a cross-section of the root of Japanese knotweed, it looks like a Crunchie bar — it has a golden colour and honeycomb pattern. All that material will dissolve into the apple cider vinegar.

"After about two or three weeks, all that you are left with is the outer bark shell. Then you strain off the bark and you are good to go.

"Normally, the farmers start off with three or four 20-litre drums, but when they get into it, they are looking at getting 500L or 1,000L lots of it, depending on how many cattle they have.”

While Moonshine might seem an ideal medicine for organic growers, it would be practically impossible to grow organically certified Japanese knotweed in Ireland, given its classification as an invasive species.

Does anyone know of a free online or downloadable CAD package? I only want to draw out a simple bracket that I've got sketched so I can send to a fabricator for quotes.

Onshape

3d cad package and free, download able from the Web. Computer may need a graphics card to use it effectively

It looks to be from the article.

Got it done in Sketchup - as I realised I had it already on PC.

What is the best filetype to export it as in order to provide to a fabricators to quote? I think I just need it as a visual so they can see the effort.

It's forcing small farmers to either use contractors or spend stupid money on LESS equipment. We used to use a contractor with an umbilical pipe for the lagoon but the downside is that you have to wait for him to become available, the weather conditions may not be perfect when he is available and you end up blanket spreading the whole farm due to the costs. In the last couple of years we have spread the slurry with our own tanker & splash plate as the weather conditions suit, in the fields that need it first and we can follow the cattle after grazing iykwim.

Some of us may end up getting to know one another in the Courts 😏

Is that the same client who used to sell hedging

Thanks - I was trying to export as a 3D model which meant I wasn't getting the PDF option.

the few individuals who keep coming up with all these should have no cover. their motives and associates should be out there

Got an extra 1 for luck, scanned for 2. Full sister was first in tullamore, ballinrobe, mountbellew commercial ewe lamb classes last summer and 3rd in all ireland in bunniconlon. Hopefully the ewe lamb will make the cut for the shows again this year.