Dairy Chitchat 4, an udder new thread.

Dawg, you are kidding yourself.

The people who are gunning for dairy farmers see the tillage farmer in the exact same light.

Never said otherwise.

There’s a propensity on this forum to point the finger at tillage farmers as being as culpable as dairy..it maybe so, but imho it’s the MP on dairy farms that’s the big culprit. Remember cows are ‘land spreading’ slurry on the MP for 8-9mts of the year…then it gets another dollop in January with the umbilical, then urea, then ‘watery slurry’ and urea/can every few weeks. But but but the SEWAGE!

While the MP goes under the guise of other/all grassland the water will continue to degrade in quality. End of.

It's the 80's at least the water is being tested. Levels were higher then too.

Ye are further down the road than we are though in water framework development policies though. Wasn't all the talk about livestock out there too and the belief the change to tillage would improve waterways. And then it didn't.

I can't share pdf files but Google may bring it up.

He'd be an academic environmentalist who'd be aware of these talks and findings.

We are at a crossroads in this country. You can have the likes of an taisce clogging the airways with the non stop anti livestock that was preached twenty years ago in France. Or a full serious look at all aspects of N leachates to waterways.

But at the moment it's an Taisce with go plant based to save the waterways. Which is bolony.

ASSAP programme in timoleague would disagree

Industrial Spruce forestry and ongoing peat removal/drainage by the likes of BNM are big players in water quality issues too, especially in catchments that have recently lost top level status in mostly upland areas and the Shannon Basin(which have declined by nearly 90% since the 80's!!) - and the so called Greens in government have done FA on either of these issues!!😤

What is the cost difference between the 14,6 and 16,6 slats, I am assuming that the 16,6 is much heavier.

Great post M.

I definitely agree with most of your post except for the political aspect. Europe will not allow the downward spiral of water quality, and going down the Dutch route of trying to disrupt national politics, won’t help anyone. Europe doesn’t give a damn anymore about farmers. They’ve a green agenda now and the green lobby is powerful.

Fully agree on spreading slurry out of season ….no one wants to shop a neighbour but at this stage there is no excuse nor should there be ….a minority are screwing things up for the majority ….guy spreading out of season rarely gets caught but a heavy handed dept inspector will rock up to a lad that dosnt spread out of season …..records in tact and yard in very good shape and he’ll find holes to pick after lots of digging ….and most of these would be very minor in comparasion

water quality isn’t as you say deteorating in all the big dairy areas ….timmalagoue is an example …faulty sewage tanks and councils pumping (knowingly )raw sewage to rivers and sea far bigger polluters than u think

as farmers atm no matter what we do it’ll never be enough in the eyes of some …..getting fairly fed up of it now

The IFAc were too busy with more serious issues, making sure no suckler farmers got paid to reduce cow numbers and putting plans in place to fly calves out of the country. Do you not remember the last presidential candidate debate with the great Justin.

The nitrates derogation was dealt with in less that 30 seconds. Justin asked were they all in favour of the derogation and

the nodding dogs moved on to more serious issues about protecting the suckler herd and of course the flying calves

Wont the cows cover that in fairness,

With cheap grain and milk in the mid 40's, you have to be making a fortune