Dairy Chitchat 4, an udder new thread.

No rain fell on their farm for the last 8 months. Ran out of nuts Saturday morning, new mealbin is a pain .

I can't even get into the new hoppers to fill them. I filled the bucket of the digger with coarse dairy ration and shovelled it out at feed trough in shed, theyre in on bales at night. I was surprised they weren't antsy when milking with no nuts

For a second major airport in the country you would think somewhere in the midlands would make more sense instead of shoehorning another one into the East coast commuter belt where land and basic services are already under alot of development pressure. Somewhere along the M4 beyond Kilcock would tic alot of the relevant boxes

Off topic but was out of diesel in tank in yard recently and filled tractor twice in local garage and it hits home how much you use travelling to outside places compared to filling up out of tank in yard

Thank god this is not China or anything like it for that matter .….... sure its far less planes we need in the skies as it is never mind expansion

’I wonder how anyone stands in a parlor’ is becoming more and more relevant here. Over 30 in the farm relief here, and not one will milk. We’re OK for staff but that could change fast.
What yields are you achieving and how much extra meal are you feeding?

Are you spending the same amount of time at cows?

What breed of cows?

Cost per litre of robots?

Electricity costs on par with a milking parlor?

Any change to the durability of the cows..are they lasting as long with the extra production?

Did you get a grant?

How long would it take to train new staff to be able to work the robots properly?

Thanks for posting Visa!

There's trials and some research taking place but nothing really concrete edit to add on obviously there's the robotic rotary parlours on the go already it was herringbone and headbanging type parlours I was talking about

I think the key is to have milking time less than an hour long. It's better for the farmer and animal. The less time to milk, the less it's viewed as a chore. Paid labour can be used to mask a bad set up for the farmer. And then it's less likely to get the labour if there's a bad set up.

There was a guy came around a few years ago, looking to build a solar farm. 1000 euro/acre/year lease for boggish land, and you could still have sheep. Not one person was interested. all it takes is one person that won't sell to upset that airport plan

Thanks for your comment, i assume ye didnt get rain. Its a stone base, milkman and dairys very happy.

Indeed there's always an asshole to make **** of others

I was talking to a chap at the weekend. He does 10 milkings a week for a chap. 1hr20. €50 per milking.

Works out at €500 a week for 14hours work. He has another gig on the side.

sounds alright once he is close by. He’s travelling to and from milking 10 times.

There's a granite base there with quartz veins.

Could be uranium, lead, gold, lithium.

You're dead right. Pit time and total time are two different things. The sh1t some dairy farmers spout about milking time taking an hour is just that.

Have wages gone that out of control that lads are thumbing there nose at 50 euro a milking ......its no wonder lads are getting out and a lot of businesses are closing down. Who would want to be self employed anymore 🤔 😕 🙄

A friend is milking weekends at €50 cash/milking, I remarked that it wasn't great but he said it makes a difference as he hasn't a great job.

Horses for courses I suppose

A couple of years back I got approached to do a bit of subbie work in my old skill set. Pay was 300ish/ day. Sounds great. However it was not an 8 hour day.

Firstly it involved significant travelling every day usually an hour and a half on average and you used your own transport every day I was averaging over 150 miles per day. I averaged it at 50c/km or 75 euro a day to allow for everything.

The night before you be 60-70 minutes downloading the job prepping for it a few days earlier you have arranged meeting times with other involved in the job.

So you hit the road at about 7am, spend the day on the job and you be hitting the farm yard that evening between 4-5 pm. Dose not sound too bad.

However You were not finished, do the cattle head home have the dinner and you started into the job completion paper work. This would take at least two hours usually two and a half. Between photos, documentations etc.

Along with that jobs were cancelled at short notice and work was very intermittent unless you were willing to travel 100+ miles to jobs each way at times. TBF however invoices were promptly paid by middle of the following month.

Now as I was farming I did not have the self employed benefits to put against it such as electricity, car expenses, phone which are written off against farm. I be hitting the high tax bracket as well.

If I allowed for holiday pay I was doing a 14-15 hour day for about 110-130 euro into my hand.

BBeing Self employed has many benefits especially now that the self employed credit is the same as the PAYE credit. You can write off a certain amount of personnel expenditure. However you have to be a realist and allow for holiday pay and fund a pension. That is where the biggest failure happens.

However most will continue to reinvest in the business instead of funding holidays and pension. There is a lad retiring in the betterhalf workplace. His wife actually works there as well and is retired. He was 65 and could have gone 5 years ago. His pension will be in the region of 35k, his wife probaly. 5k less. They have only one child and would not live extravagantly.

I often have this debate with my MIL and a BIL. Any time a tradesman calls they nearly have heartfailure at the charge for the repair. The cannot see that he is entitled to fund his holidays and pension and the time it take to go from one task to another or the time it takes to collect bit and pieces for jobs. Neither do they allow for the risk of sickness.

The MIL between the OAP and her work pension would have 6-700/ week before tax, yet she cannot equate that to what a self employed needs to achieve that sort of pension

The amount of tradesmen packing up and moving to multi nationals is unreal. They don’t even want a cash job on weekends or evenings now.

Yield is 6500. Was around 5000. Was carrying alot of shite before. 520 kg solids last year. 1.3 tonne of meal. Not very efficient really yet.

I don't know whether I could say cows are lasting longer. They move at their own pace alright but as a herd walk more because alot of them move 3 times to 3 paddocks. My milkings around 2.3 for the year. I'm culling harder than previous.

Fr cow. Only have a couple of 10k cows. Have a couple of 4k cows aswell though!! A small % of Jersey.

Yes got 40% grant

Old parlour was old kip. Had no plate cooler so was expensive to cool milk. I remember the bill being the same when we switched. I can't give a better answer than that.

Cost per litre, I'll have to get back to you. But I know my loan repayments are very close to what I was paying for 5 milkings a week.

It's more the cows you have to train. Tbh even though cows might be on the robot I seen an improvement in year 2. If the spring played ball I'd see another improvement this year.

Am I right in thinking that the phrase like "does not extend to mines and minerals" is on every title deed in the country?

Still u suppose the first step is to own it anyway. It'd be hard to see a govt allowing such assets go east when the EU is trying to secure stuff in Greenland.