We have had another tough couple of weeks on the weather front as we continue to get heavy pulses of rain every few days and ground conditions deteriorate rapidly on farm. Weanlings will have to be housed this week and all that will be left outside are the remaining milking cows. We will try to keep the cows out grazing as much as possible up to drying off, with numbers quickly reducing every week from here on in.

We plan to calve down and milk an additional 100 cows next year

At this stage in the season, it’s all about setting the farm up well for next year, leaving enough feed out in the fields for the spring, getting the herd dried off in good order and making sure that all stock are healthy and well going into the sheds for the winter. We will dose everything for fluke and worms about a month after housing and hopefully set them up on a clean slate for next year.

We plan to calve down and milk an additional 100 cows next year so we will try to get as organised as possible over the next few weeks in preparation for that onslaught. This will probably be the last big jump in numbers for a few years on the farm as the carrots of farm consolidation and herd maturation hopefully start to appear again over the horizon.

Crossroads

We are reaching a crossroads nationally too over the next few years in terms of finding a pathway forward for our dairy industry in Ireland. On the one hand we have a vibrant profitable industry that has the potential to create a lot of employment and contribute hugely to the economy of rural Ireland. But we must balance that against the environmental impact that our cows have on the national ecosystem.

There is a happy medium somewhere that we need to start working towards

We need to come up with a vision to move our industry forward sustainably and minimise our impact on biodiversity, air quality and water quality. We will not be given a free rein to expand and constraints will be put in place, but we cannot be expected to farm in completely sterile conditions either. There is a happy medium somewhere that we need to start working towards as soon as possible, rather than all stakeholders pulling in opposite directions.

The hurdles keep rising for the farmer, some of which are logical and make sense, and others that just create cost and cause confusion or even disillusion. As a nation, we need to decide what we want the future of Irish dairy farming to look like and start working constructively towards that as soon as possible. We will have a new Teagasc dairy roadmap to digest towards the end of the month which will hopefully provide some solutions in this area.

These objections are clear evidence of the importance of our social licence to operate in our industry

From the public, we hear more about what people don’t want, rather than what people do want. There is a lot of negativity out there now towards dairying. We have a series of objections lodged against the planned Glanbia/Royal A-ware development in Belview. The objections are based on increasing methane emissions from the expanding dairy herd.

These objections are clear evidence of the importance of our social licence to operate in our industry and evidence that we need to engage better with the public around our environmental footprint, including how methane is calculated.

We can’t let a minority of objectors hold up this vital development

This plant is vital for Irish milk suppliers after Brexit, to diversify our product mix away from a reliance on cheddar cheese for the UK market. It secures and stabilises thousands of jobs and family farm incomes across the southeast. We can’t let a minority of objectors hold up this vital development.

Farmers are already putting their shoulders to the wheel and taking actions on climate change and the environment. Some of those actions need time to take effect and for us to see their results. There will be additional measures over the next few years, but again these need to be assessed over time and given a chance to take effect before we have any knee jerk reactions.