DEAR SIR:

You are to be complimented for highlighting so often the importance of maintaining and supporting our suckler herd.

Climate change, real or imaginary has spawned an avalanche of experts and celebrities who have no concept whatsoever of what the countryside and farming life would be like for so many without cattle.

Apart altogether from the economics of beef production, which are abysmal at the moment, and as the huge losses being incurred by finishers as a result of COVID-19 are being totally ignored by the powers that be, one wonders what the cattle trade next back-end will be like.

COVID-19 has shown us who the real polluters are

Most people who work with animals find it very therapeutic.

COVID-19 has shown us who the real polluters are. Why stick a knife in the suckler man’s back? The dairy herd has exploded and milk production is, and always was, the most profitable farming enterprise. Unfortunately, the progeny of today’s dairy herd are anathema to good cattlemen both aesthetically and productively.

This is fairytale stuff

We read some weeks ago that you could buy Friesian/Holstein calves and have them weighing over 670kg at 24 months. Another man had Friesian/Angus weanlings gaining 1.2kg daily during the long winter period with very little concentrates. This is fairytale stuff. We did have some good Friesian cattle but that’s a long time ago now.

Man at a fair

Today’s Holsteins remind me of the man at the fair selling a horse when asked what he was good for replied “he’s a great horse to put in hay and put out dung!”

Michael Purcell of the legendary cattle exporting family when loading a boat said to a man who had just unloaded a load of crocks of Friesian bullocks with backs that would split a drop: “You can load up them again – ’tis to Libya not to Lourdes we are going!”

This country is only a drop in the ocean and if the rest of the planet doesn’t do what they should

Livestock farmers, especially those in the suckler herd, are going to be rode over to alter the course of a perceived climate change. This country is only a drop in the ocean and if the rest of the planet doesn’t do what they should, no matter what we do, we are doomed too.

It is like praying for good weather – if everybody else prays you needn’t bother for if they get it you will get it too. Are we to substitute the Greens and their wolves for our well-bred good quality beef cattle?

The truth, which can sometimes be a very elusive concept when discussing these matters, is that the suckler herd is extremely important to rural life and the rural economy. So, for God’s sake support and preserve our suckler farmers and also those involved in the export of Friesian Holstein calves. Then we just might make a living. Wash your hands!