Ifac, which does my farm accounts, caused the only change to the general farm routine, despite the panic enveloping the rest of the country. In fact, the ifac attitude was entirely reasonable. As anyone who deals with ifac knows, it has a farm recording system where a recorder calls to the house every two months or so, goes through all the invoices, bills paid and cheques lodged, as well as computing what VAT is owed to Revenue or due from them if you are registered for VAT, as we are. It’s an excellent service and prevents the chaos that can so easily develop as the tax year-end approaches.

This week, ifac was due to call as usual but, instead, I received a text asking me to leave the papers at the front door so that they could be collected rather than the recorder coming into the house and going through the material.

Given the age demographic of Irish farmers and the fact that many will have offspring coming home during this coronavirus period, I thought the policy from ifac was timely and appropriate.

With all the cattle still indoors, the remaining continental bulls are on a mostly cereal-based diet with a few kilos of silage. While they are being fed to appetite I reckon they are eating about 1.8% to 2% of body weight in dry matter terms.

The new Holstein crosses are on a diet with more roughage but on a similar dry matter basis they are consuming about 2.5% of body weight but with a lower conversion efficiency. I am told they will only kill-out eventually at about 50% versus my present continental bulls with a typical kill-out of 58% to 60%. The scope for supplementation is clearly limited and we will try to maximise the use of grass and make the best possible silage.