Dairy Chitchat 4, an udder new thread.

It's simple market forces. Traditionally a substantial number of dairy farmers used to have beef operations whether to weanling, store or to finish, but the white gold seemed more profitable. Many assumed that all calves would have a positive value over feed/rearing costs. As Teagasc admitted they forgot about the calf.

It exactly the same as the lads that sell weanlings or stores in the mart in the autumn or the lads selling finished cattle then. You are at the mercy of the market. It was always the Irish beef farmer that created a floor under calf prices competing against each other for the limited supply.

Now they can buy as many as they want. A young lad not too far away dose a bit of contracting and rears a few calves as well. He goes to NZ for the silage season every year, really good tractor mechanic as well. He was on machinery maintenance out there the last few years. He decided to skip the calf buying this year. He was rearing 70ish a year. There is a couple of sad dairy farmers near him at present.

I do not have an angst against them. It's just simple economic facts. There are beef farmers going out now paying 3+/kg for stores, they be whinging and crying from October on when the beef base price is probably in the 4.5-4.7/kg base price. Same thing with lads buying yearlings and trying to turn them in 6-8 months.

In beef we all learned the hard way, you have to know your costs and control them. If your costs are wrong you will lose money. Sympathy is not really in my forte either. It's up to everyone to look after there own business. If calves were 2-3 times the price dairy farmers would take the profit( as they be entitled to) and they would not worry if the beef farmer was losing his shirt.

It's all about supply and demand. Most of the issue's with calves were predicted 5+ years ago on the farming forum. When you have too many cows calving in too short a time frame and too few lads to buy and rear them then the simple fact is you will have pressure on price. When you add an issue with calf quality then it fairly obvious what will happen.

Why did that lad decide to stay in NZ for an extra months or so. Last year he was getting calves virtually free with 20L of milk that could not go into the tank. Because he reckoned it was worth more to him I imagine⁹. He be back in a month or so for the silage season.

The most important lad in the farming game at present is the calf rearer.....and there seems to be less of them every year.

And as for the Fr bullocks it was good while it lasted, but the DW's have dropped 30kgs in 2-3 years. So I am moving on.

Business is business

You only need a herd number this year. But be under no illusion within two years you will need to submit a nutrient plan. As well cross referencing will happen. The department will cross reference your nitrates to your fertlizer purchases.

No AA application will trigger an inspection fairy fast I imagine when the register is up and running. Cross referencing using data collection is fairly easy. Within 1-2 years an AI bot could be used to do this.

All trying to bypass regulations ever dose in Ireland is for a government or LA department to tighten the rules to force compliance. I am not saying you will not get away with it for 1,2 or even 3 years, but the rules will be enforced.

The minister gives you permission to buy fertiliser through the register. They can withdraw that permissable any stage. If they want to target a situation like you propose, no AA application to permission to buy fertiliser it a simple fix

The lads who cut up their land grazing in the Spring and then they wonder why they have no grass come the summer drought.

Controlled starvation.

This year is really rattling them in fairness, usually you'd get away with their methods in a normal spring but subjecting cows to months on end off on-off grazing, not buffering etc your going to get issues....

What I can't understand is these guys are top of their class , praised etc by our advisory body as extremely profitable farmers, but they haven't got the money to buy silage/maize etc to buffer cows in the last week of March, doesn't add up

Not a hope. Been there got the t shirt. Our cow does far better on grass than silage. We might be feeding the milking cows hard now but hopefully soon enough they’ll be in full grass and go full tilt.

just over 180calved now and not much bother with it being a shite spring

Just a different type of cow. Not bred for litres. We’re taking 3- 4 cuts of silage every year so quality is always a big consideration.

Ours are doing just shy of 28 l atm and if they hit 2nd round grass they always jump a couple of litres in a few days

And a bit

home place be paid for in the next while. We might go back a bit or stay going when that happens. see how the mood is when the time comes. Wife wants to be home full time with the kids and help out so unlikely we’ll reduce numbers at all

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣ohhh for God's sake

Moving on? What the next highly profitable beef system? I'm thinking of keeping 50 calves next year myself.

Yeah 4 cuts of crap silage 😂😂

If the spring was good they would be feeding 2-3 kg of meal. Not for me personally and my scenario but there has to be a large % of farmers following similar advice. If it was that bad of a system would they not all be bankrupt. I wonder is it generally accepted that there is lots of extras being fed just not mentioned. Even zero grazed grass is a supplement surely.