The Shinagh dairy farm is a 250-cow research farm operated jointly by Teagasc and Carbery co-op. It’s nearly a decade in existence, with a remit to provide information on the profitability and sustainability of a large-scale grass-based system

They post monthly updates, and the June one dealt with the breeding programme. After a round of AI to dairy bulls, which would fulfil the requirement for replacement heifers, a round of beef breed AI would follow.

And then, this: “Five home-bred Friesian stock bulls will run with the herd after six weeks breeding. They hopefully will have only 50 repeating cows to put in calf after the six weeks AI.”

Read it twice, I know I had to. Five home-bred Friesian stock bulls. To an expected 50 cows. On a Teagasc research farm.

This undermines Teagasc director Gerry Boyle’s commitment that ‘scrub’ bulls would not be used on Teagasc research farms. It undermines the efforts of ICBF to get all cattle farmers, dairy and beef, to use only pedigree bulls. Furthermore, it undermines the status of this research farm as using best practice, when it clearly is falling short in this crucial aspect of breeding policy.

Interestingly, the 55 replacement heifers, being contract reared off-farm, are bred to Angus bulls, not Friesian, following AI.

The 2020 bull calves and beef heifer calves are being contract reared until April 2021. “We are doing this mainly to establish the costs and returns (if any!) in the event that there was no export market for dairy calves,” says Shinagh. They might be reared as beef, but they are sold at around 12 months old “on the open market”. So they could easily be bought by a dealer who then markets them as dairy stock, and perhaps even “dairy stock from a Teagasc farm”. It wouldn’t be a lie, but it would be utterly misleading. Such outcomes should not be permitted to exist, even as remote possibilities.

We need to ensure we have a viable system to bring dairy calves through to slaughter, particularly with growing opposition to live exports. Dairy farmers using decent beef genetics is the foundation stone to achieving this. If every dairy farmer adopted the same policy as Shinagh, we’d have 300,000 calves off scrub bulls every year. And the farmer trying to finish those animals will be the one who suffers most.

Sustainability, partnerships, relationships are all words Teagasc use on a regular basis when talking about growing the dairy industry, with dairy calf-to-beef systems being promoted. As the old saying goes, actions speak louder than words.