Dairy Chitchat 4, an udder new thread.

I think she's been turning more to a greener more make believe angle for a while now 🤔 ever since she gave up on the partnership arrangement she seems to have a chip on her shoulder

I was more commenting on her general carry on on countrywide and her airy fairiness and lack of knowledge of real farming. In other words, where you are depending on your farm as an income

They do deferentiate our product. Grass fed butter is a softer more yellow and world wide recognised better tasting product, and commands a better price any world shelf it's on.We don't make butter outside of grazing months.

PGI status gives credibility to a system of a product. It exists across many food items from many corners of Europe.

All buyers, including commodity buyers buy on the basis of credibilty of the accreditation on the item. No accreditation, no sale. Wise up to that.

You have 2 choices when it comes to accreditation, either your own (in this case Origin Green) or the buyer will do it.

The 3 card tricks you diss at are the reason your product leaves the Island.

If you churn butter in summer months its easy to understand the cows are out on pasture. However for beef, the product is made for the lifetime of animal, winter and summer so its difficult to see how the grass fed thing can be ensured. The description has a few get out clauses it acknowledges that upto 10% of feed can be maize or other feeds. Also the winter period is 145 days +40 in difficult weather conditions. Also doing a lot of heavy lifting is assuming that silage is 100% grass crop. The benefit of true grass fed or hay fed is that the animal can discriminate good grass from poor quality weeds or ensiled foreign material. The precision chop silage doesnt allow this distinction, so hence an attempt to have good grazing for the animal to be content ends up not being possible as there is inclusion of no so palatable materials.

Grass fed is replaced in Germany with a much more comprehensive hay&grass fed mark (heumilch) no silage! There as animals most be fed on grass or dried hay, the intake is much more possible to for animal to only consume healthy grass and secondly it immediately eliminates the possibility of maize.. I think the irish designation is lower value and too open to abuse and the type of smart consumer who is willing to pay for it will be hoodwinked.

I know we drink the milk at home when the cows go to grass, but not when housed.. I find there's a taste off it when silage in the diet.. but I'm probably just a fussy eater.

Fair enough, I don't listen to CountryWide and I'll take the liberty of reserving my personal opinion of her. It just gets my goat when people don't address the issues in question not to mind the personal stuff when it's obvious they don't really know the people or the situation. This can be an awful country for absolute bullshite rumour mongering about any kind of a negative story.

The government/agri meat businesses wanted as much beef as possible labeled as grass fed. That is why the lifetime grassfed status was used. The majority of finishers who use grass and grass silage wanted a more targeted PGI.

The PGI was very unfair on them as there is no premium going to be paid on all the beef. I slaughter off grass mainly, stores are usually about 12+ months on the farm. On average they get about 200kgs per head of a ration to get suitable flesh and fat cover on them.

However as I am a small operator I will recieve less than a feedlot operators where the animal will eat very little in the way of grass or silage for the last 60-100 days.

Looking for milk "up north" now.

We've gone from "oh this is great everyone is getting into cows" to " there's too many cows in the country. We need an exit scheme" to "oh sh1t. Phuck we are back 20% on milk supply. What do we do now?"

How much is weather related, and how much regulations and costs.

Has supply peaked for ireland.

well peaked ….regulation …red tape lack of reliable labour /lack of successor …bullshit 😀and lads just fed up ….there’s easier ways of making money now if a lad wants and every parish still has a hungry hole willing to blow everyone out of it to lease a bit of land …..block of land near me made 570/acre recently taken by dairy farmer who dose a lot of z grazing

Indeed - and its still been pushed for some bizarre reason🙄

https://www.independent.ie/farming/news/exciting-work-exchange-scheme-announced-for-young-dairy-farmers-from-new-zealand-and-ireland/a1075618041.html?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3xeY_q_bszdVD-gEqKhidxmIPJeq_jnBYWMRRSTrQiJRZA3NPSQbhRYMM_aem_AfomdxKfsFSTbRoWum97HTZjF_88l672DKdu6AuaWPov7uOk2Esx1dTkfb-iCRps4cqqHcREF1YZvlTI9g06uYsv

Jesus christ that's mental money I don't care what they think therecapable of knocking out of it.

No I don't think I would I wouldn't change my youth and being able to work with and help out my father and relations but I think I would be as happy now in another occupation as I am now farming without as much work and hardship by times ( yes i know large parts of the hardship are self inflicted. 😄)