“You couldn’t give a Friesian cow away in a raffle”, one Donegal farmer was heard saying to another recently, “and continentals aren’t much better!” And so, the whirlwind life of a beef farmer continues!

The cold stores are full, we’re told, factories don’t want processing beef and now the rumblings have started that they don’t want bulls either. This is before any fall out from Brexit, not an overly encouraging time, it would have to be said. Soon the age and weight cards will be played hard.

These things are barely more than mentioned when cattle are scarce, but when cattle are plentiful, you daren’t go over 16 months or 420kgs. That always amuses me, even though its not very funny!

Factories always seem to want what you haven’t got

Finishing beef is a bit like trying to hit a moving target, factories always seem to want what you haven’t got. They don’t seem to want anything at the minute, and they definitely don’t want to pay for it, so it doesn’t really matter what you have.

I am reliably informed however, from a man who was talking to another man, who was talking to a factory agent, that cattle are going to be scarce in the spring! So, we may just keep blindly feeding away and sure hopefully we won’t lose too much money. You never would know, if cattle are really scarce, we might break even.

Change of fluke treatment

I have decided to give myself a little bit of extra work this winter, just for the craic! I have decided to change my fluke treatment from the trodax injection that I usually use to a triclabendazole drench, that obviously must be administered down the throat. I know trodax is difficult to get hold of at the minute, but that’s not the reason I’ve changed.

I’ve been using trodax for probably the last 10 years as its easy to administer for a one-man show, no wrestling with big cows and ending up with more dose on you than in the animal. Although there is not a lot of resistance issues reported in relation to the product, I decided I’d better practice what I preach and change the active ingredient.

I can usually time my fluke treatment with the day I’m reading my herd test, the entire herd is going through the crush anyway and the vet usually doesn’t mind me injecting them as they are going through. That didn’t work out for me this year, as they weren’t housed long enough for me to use the trodax and it would have just slowed things up too much to try to give them an oral drench.

On the plus side I’ll get to try out my new dosing hook, that I bought five years ago. Happy Christmas everybody!

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Farmer writes: the pros and cons of a winter TB test