While the past few days of good weather has been most welcome in the northwest, some farmers are still finding it extremely difficult to get slurry tanks empty before the 15 October deadline.
Fodder and slurry are the main concerns for livestock farmers after the long wet spell in Co Donegal.
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Speaking at a Teagasc event in Donegal on Friday, Letterkenny-based adviser Gary Fisher said he has never seen a worse summer in his 20 years of working in the Donegal area. It’s been a very difficult summer on all farmers in the area.
“We have many different types of situations in the county. In the west, we have many farmers who haven’t been able to spread slurry all summer due to ground conditions, while in the east, farmers emptied tanks in June, but because animals were housed for some of the summer, tanks have been filling again and need to be emptied before next week’s closing date,” he said.
“We were really hoping for an extension to the spreading period to alleviate the pressure in the northwest, but it’s nearly too late coming at this stage.”
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Listen to Gary Fisher talk to Adam Woods about weather issues in Donegal in our podcast below:
One large finisher in the county has even stopped purchasing cattle in the past 10 days due to slurry issues in the feedlot. The grain harvest was also painstakingly slow and a Teagasc survey estimated last weekend that there was 130ha of spring barley left to cut and 230ha of straw lying in fields to bale in Donegal.
Fisher advised farmers who attended the event to complete a fodder budget as soon as possible and assess the situation on their farm, so that action could be taken early in the winter in terms of stretching fodder if deficits were there.
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Speaking at a Teagasc event in Donegal on Friday, Letterkenny-based adviser Gary Fisher said he has never seen a worse summer in his 20 years of working in the Donegal area. It’s been a very difficult summer on all farmers in the area.
“We have many different types of situations in the county. In the west, we have many farmers who haven’t been able to spread slurry all summer due to ground conditions, while in the east, farmers emptied tanks in June, but because animals were housed for some of the summer, tanks have been filling again and need to be emptied before next week’s closing date,” he said.
“We were really hoping for an extension to the spreading period to alleviate the pressure in the northwest, but it’s nearly too late coming at this stage.”
Listen to Gary Fisher talk to Adam Woods about weather issues in Donegal in our podcast below:
One large finisher in the county has even stopped purchasing cattle in the past 10 days due to slurry issues in the feedlot. The grain harvest was also painstakingly slow and a Teagasc survey estimated last weekend that there was 130ha of spring barley left to cut and 230ha of straw lying in fields to bale in Donegal.
Fisher advised farmers who attended the event to complete a fodder budget as soon as possible and assess the situation on their farm, so that action could be taken early in the winter in terms of stretching fodder if deficits were there.
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