Depression: Dairy farmers Con Murphy from Cork and David Kerr from Laois spoke freely about their battle with depression at two of our dairy meetings this week. They both spoke about how a combination of small problems had combined to push them into a state of mind where they didn’t want to get out of bed in the morning. Both David and Con had a lot in common in terms of dairy farming – both had grown cow numbers, both had a lot of development work ongoing in the farmyard and both were probably stretched financially, especially when low milk prices similar to 2009 arrived in Ireland.

For many farmers, these three very real on-farm issues could be very much to the fore again this year. Con and David highlighted the fact that often men are too brave and macho to discuss a problem like depression or mental health, so it falls to those around to help out the person suffering from the illness. They said talking to family, friends, and specialist mental health advisers was the only way to start solving the problem. David said the only way he could properly deal with the problem was by taking time away from the farm in specialist care. As Con Murphy said, taking medical treatment will only bring you so far along the journey to recovery and the person with the illness still needs to have the drive to get better, so all the help they can get from friends and family is absolutely necessary.

Think about your fellow farmers and especially those undergoing a lot of on-farm development work. As David Kerr said, if you’ve got a warning before that stressful situations don’t suit you, then you should not put yourself in a pressure situation. He advised to set your farming system up to manage that and get building or machinery contractors to oversee development or routine work to free you up to manage daily routine jobs.

Opportunities: As calving gets under way on most Irish dairy farms, many are faced with managing milk supply for a final two months. Monaghan farmer Olin Greenan suggested that dairy farmers need to manage their time and workload and not push themselves too hard for something that might make very little difference to the bottom line on profit. For example, he talked about the impracticality of dairy farmers holding onto bull calves, especially if there are no facilities for housing or managing them. His advice is stick to what you do best in the long-term interest of your business and do it properly. This will return more to you than pushing things too far and potentially getting a sickness in calves that ends up affecting all your calves, reducing thrive and costing you weight gain and, more importantly, your time at a busy time of the year.

Write down: Some of the best farmers I know are great to write information down on what happens in the farmyard. All of us learn when we are forced to take notes and can look back at these notes to piece together lessons that make decision making easier.