Profit monitor: Doing the same thing every year and expecting a different outcome isn’t a good way to make progress. Finding out where you are going wrong and benchmarking yourself against others with similar systems is a good place to start.

The Teagasc Profit Monitor is a good system to help you do this. Assessing the performance on your farm in 2019 should be top of the to-do list over the next few weeks. There is no point sticking your head in the sand thinking that poor financial performance will go away without changes being made to your system and management.

Put the time aside before the end of January to gather up all sales and input dockets from 2019. Make an appointment with your Teagasc adviser to complete the profit monitor and, more importantly, make a follow-up appointment to assess the performance.

This is not a box-ticking exercise. The scorecard report is good for analysing performance as it highlights areas where performance is good and areas where it is poor.

Make a list of five changes you will undertake in 2020 to improve performance. Cross them off when completed. Don’t be overly optimistic or unrealistic. It could be something like spreading a load of lime in 2020. You can pay anywhere from €1,000-€4,000 to accountants depending on farm size. Are you getting value for this service? Is there a follow-up to review accounts after they have been submitted to give you some feedback on where the issues are?

BDGP: Payment runs continue for participants who have submitted all information under the Beef Data and Genomics programme. You can log in to www.icbf.com to check that everything is up to date.

Make sure you have all genomic tags sent away and all survey data has been submitted either online or by post. You can also check your eligibility to hit next year’s target of 50% four- or five-star of your reference cows/heifers on the replacement index by 31 October 2020.

You should have received BPS and ANC balancing payments at this stage. If there are any outstanding queries in relation to maps or stocking rate, you are advised to contact the Department of Agriculture as soon as possible to resolve the issue.

Handling cattle in yards: Take care around handling cattle on frozen yards. I heard of a case at the weekend where a part-time farmer was dosing cows on Sunday morning and an in-calf cow slipped on a frozen yard and broke her leg.

The weekend is a busy time on part-time operated farms but don’t take chances around your own safety or the safety of livestock.

Waiting an extra week to dose or clip won’t make a big difference. Wait until yards are thawed out before moving cattle across them. Concrete grooving or spreading sand or sawdust on slippy/shiny concrete can help.