Shed roof blown away and no power as calving kicks off on Clare dairy farm

Dairy farming in Kilmihil in west Clare, Niall Reidy had his first calf born on Tuesday 28 January.

He is without power and reckons he could have up to 30 calves by this time next week.

Some 20 heifers are synchronised, due to calve down on Monday 3 February, but with many carrying heifer calves, Niall expects they may come early.

Niall has a 33kva PTO generator and acknowledges that it goes a long way to alleviating pressure on the farm at this time.

However, particularly coming into the busiest time of year, there’s no doubt that storm damage and a power outage presents challenges on farms; both little and large, from shed roofs to calf hygiene.

“The reality is now, even something like this morning, first cow calved; I wanted to sterilise my stomach tube, but I realised there is no boiling water up at the farm. There is an electric heater. The generator hadn’t been on long enough to boil it. Something as simple as that,” he explains.

Storm

Like many around the country, Niall - who is married to Lianna with three children under five - lost power in the early hours of last Friday morning as storm Éowyn tracked across the country.

The first challenge he encountered was getting to the farm. Nine trees blocked the road between their house and the yard. They cut up and moved the trees that were safe to do so. The ESB came to move another, as a tree was down on a power line.

When he got up to the farm yard, Niall assessed the damage, which included a roof being blown away.

“I lost a roof, an old hay barn roof, but it’s over a cubicle shed, so that got badly damaged. Look, it’s a 50-year-old roof, so I’m not surprised.

“From there, we got the generator up and going, so we were able to run the channel scrapers. I got my well going through the generator.

“We were able to get water then, but it was intermittent because you were only getting it whenever the generator was on. We managed away as best we could,” he said.

To mitigate, Niall – who is the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association (ICMSA) rep for west and north Clare - says he cut back on meal and pre-calving minerals to lessen the animals’ thirst.

“We’ve been just plodding away since. The calf shed is washed and prepared. I’ve no calving camera at the moment. There’ll just be a lot more watching and less sleeping,” the dairy farmer adds.

Forestry

Alongside the direct dairy farm challenges, Niall also had some of his forestry knocked. There is 30ac planted in a block, with around one-third of this down, he reckons.

Niall explains that it was thinned five years ago and they have lost trees during storms on multiple occasions since, but last week’s storm was by far the biggest impact.

“We were advised to thin it. Look it, we’re dairy farmers not foresters. We were advised to thin, that the forest was in good condition, ground conditions didn’t seem bad at the time. Ever since, we’ve been losing trees there because it creates wind tunnels.

“There is a power line down under one of our trees now. They created a channel for the power line to run through. Any one of 100 trees could have knocked this line. The next storm could knock another tree and we’re back to square one,” he adds.

The damage is “disappointing” Niall says, as the plantation is 25 years old and they were hoping to fell in the next five to 10 years.

“My father is looking at that from a retirement point of view and I’m looking at that from an investment on the farm point of view. I’ve a lot of investing to do in sheds and that. It’s just disappointing now to see that.”

In the meantime, the ESB is trying to access the fallen line in the forestry, so Niall is hopeful if that is fixed alongside a further outage closer to Kilmihil, the power will be restored.

He and a dairy farmer neighbour are on the same line and on tenterhooks waiting for the lights to come back.

“He’s due to start calving as well. So hopefully the two of us will get back up and running,” Niall says.