We got a strong lesson in democracy from the IFA elections this week, with the tightest voting returns ever seen in the count centre right throughout the day. This culminated in two recounts for the deputy president and the Munster regional chair, with the main vote looking like a photo finish as well, right up to the end.

Every vote counted in such tight races, so well done to all of the canvassing teams, the returning officers and the staff at the count centres who did their work diligently and thankfully accurately so that there were no surprises with the recount. It’s great to see such strong candidates putting their hands up for jobs in the IFA.

Challenges

It’s a critical time for the organisation with huge challenges on environment, climate change and farm-gate prices. The new team will have to hit the ground running and address these challenges from the first day in office.

There’s a strong team in place to lead the organisation into the 2020s, and whatever our preferences before the election, we all need to row in behind them now and work together for a better outcome for Irish farmers.

The split in farm organisations was the biggest challenge over the past 12 months but hopefully the new executive can start making up lost ground there

Well done also to Joe Healy and his team for the work done over the past four years. It was a tough office to take up at the time and got even harder through the term with Brexit, the vegan agenda and the beef crisis taking centre stage.

The split in farm organisations was the biggest challenge over the past 12 months but hopefully the new executive can start making up lost ground there.

Dry off

At home, we have dried off the whole herd after checking calving dates for the last few rows of cows going through the parlour. We could have kept 30 or 40 cows milking for another week or so but we got organised and dried them all off in one group instead.

We will run the heifers in one group again for the next few weeks and get another bit of training done before the fun starts

We have enough milking done for the year and plenty of work to do next week to get ready for the “holidays”. Everyone needs a bit of a break at this stage so we will go on shorter hours from now until the middle of January.

We will run the heifers in one group again for the next few weeks and get another bit of training done before the fun starts. We freeze-branded the last few this week and cleaned up the tails for milking.

The cows tails and freeze brands will be clipped too before calving to make milking cleaner and identification a bit more straightforward in both the calving box and the milking parlour.

Dosing

We will dose all of the cows now that they are all dry and have been housed for a month. We will use a pour-on for worms and lice and give a dose of Zanil for fluke. With everything dry, it’s a good chance to clean the slate on the parasite front and we will vaccinate everything for scour the first week of January.

They look bigger than usual this year and seem to be eating us out of house and home but hopefully it’s all worth it when we sit down together on the big day

The only other job to tick off the list after that is to get our few turkeys ready for family and friends for the Christmas table.

They look bigger than usual this year and seem to be eating us out of house and home but hopefully it’s all worth it when we sit down together on the big day.

They always seem to taste nicer when home grown. I just hope that with the size of them this year that they don’t resist arrest when we go to catch them. We don’t need any injuries so close to calving. Happy Christmas to all.

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