IFA trimming costs, not slashing them
So the IFA is proceeding with a voluntary early retirement scheme. It isn’t a huge surprise, as the move has been signalled for months. The mistake would be to read too much into this, to look at it as some kind of clearout.
What is being made clear is that it is not in any way, to use the Department of Agriculture’s term, a “targeted scheme”. It is open to anyone between the age of 50 and 63.
It is offered to people at every level in the organisation who fit the age criteria. That includes executive staff, support staff and secretarial staff. It applies equally to staff based in headquarters and those in offices around the country.
So having established what it isn’t, what is it?
Every farmer knows that the difference between a clearance sale, and a reduction sale. At certain times a reduction sale can be prudent, a single-notch tightening of the belt rather than a hard cull.
Members might be more excited if the IFA could negotiate an early retirement package for farmers in the new CAP.
From meat to milk – Allen a day’s work
Now that he has exited the beef business, The Dealer understands that Bert Allen is ready to roll up his sleeves and start calving cows. The former Slaney Foods owner, who featured at number 28 in the Sunday Independent Rich List, has spent the last two years building a dairy enterprise on the family lands at Ballywalter. But this is no ordinary dairy enterprise; over 400 high-genetic merit cows have been imported from Holland and the herd will be housed all year round in new purpose-built sheds and will be milked by an army of robots. With an estimated €640m of wealth, according to the aforementioned paper, The Dealer wonders why anyone would want the hardship of dairy farming. I suppose it gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “filthy rich”.
Who’s the daddy? Dual-breed twins
Clare farmer Seán Culligan did a double-take last week when one of his Holstein Friesian cows delivered a set of twins, one Hereford bull calf and one female Limousin.
“I usually use AI for the first third of the herd. After that, I have a Hereford and a Limousin bull. I alternate between them,” he told the Dealer.
“Sometimes you could have a brown Hereford, but as they weren’t presenting right, it wasn’t until they were fully born that I realised that it had no white at all; it was just a brown Limousin.”
It turns out that each of the twin calves was sired by one of the bulls.
The phenomenon is called heteropaternal superfecundation and, according to ICBF research, occurs in less than 1% of twin bovine births.
World record €22,600 for sheepdog
I see a world record working sheepdog price was set at Skipton Auction Mart in the UK, when Emma Gray’s two-and-a-half-year-old bitch Megan was sold for 18,000gns (€22,644) last Friday. She shattered the record of 14,100gns (€17,738) set in 2016 by Padraig Doherty of Ardagh Sheepdogs. Eleven-year-old Olivia McLaughlin from Donegal made her mark in the unbroken pen at the sale, with 1,600gns for her nine-month-old black dog, Jim.
Beefy Bryan chairs Glanbia think tank
The Dealer hears former IFA supremo John Bryan has landed the plum role of chair for the Teagasc-Glanbia monitor farm programme, launched late last year.
The Teagasc-Glanbia staffers group meet regularly to form an overarching view on policy adopted on the 11 monitor dairy farms and to make sure all the Glanbia suppliers are doing it the Glanbia way – buying GAIN feed only, purchasing gas from Calor, genetics from Dovea and borrowing money from Finance Ireland. It’s called a closed loop.
I can only imagine what was said at the think tank about one of Jimmy Brett’s lorries landing in with feed as visitors gathered for a farm walk on one of the Glanbia monitor farms. Did he get shown the road I wonder?
Fly-tippers in England were taught a lesson when farmers went on a reconnaissance mission to track the address on a letter in a large heap of rubbish left on their land.
In the dead of night, farmers scooped up the offending material and delicately tipped it back into the original owners’ suburban backyard.
A video of the revenge mission appeared on the social media and The Dealer hopes it serves as a warning to other fly-tippers.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, William and Catherine, are to visit Teagasc Grange next week. The trip to the Meath college, in the royal county no less, is part of+ their first official tour to the Republic of Ireland, taking place from Tuesday 3 March until Thursday 5 March. I’m told they will be visiting Grange on Thursday 4 March. The Dealer is wondering … will they be brought to see the suckler demonstration or the dairy calf to beef demonstration?
IFA trimming costs, not slashing them
So the IFA is proceeding with a voluntary early retirement scheme. It isn’t a huge surprise, as the move has been signalled for months. The mistake would be to read too much into this, to look at it as some kind of clearout.
What is being made clear is that it is not in any way, to use the Department of Agriculture’s term, a “targeted scheme”. It is open to anyone between the age of 50 and 63.
It is offered to people at every level in the organisation who fit the age criteria. That includes executive staff, support staff and secretarial staff. It applies equally to staff based in headquarters and those in offices around the country.
So having established what it isn’t, what is it?
Every farmer knows that the difference between a clearance sale, and a reduction sale. At certain times a reduction sale can be prudent, a single-notch tightening of the belt rather than a hard cull.
Members might be more excited if the IFA could negotiate an early retirement package for farmers in the new CAP.
From meat to milk – Allen a day’s work
Now that he has exited the beef business, The Dealer understands that Bert Allen is ready to roll up his sleeves and start calving cows. The former Slaney Foods owner, who featured at number 28 in the Sunday Independent Rich List, has spent the last two years building a dairy enterprise on the family lands at Ballywalter. But this is no ordinary dairy enterprise; over 400 high-genetic merit cows have been imported from Holland and the herd will be housed all year round in new purpose-built sheds and will be milked by an army of robots. With an estimated €640m of wealth, according to the aforementioned paper, The Dealer wonders why anyone would want the hardship of dairy farming. I suppose it gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “filthy rich”.
Who’s the daddy? Dual-breed twins
Clare farmer Seán Culligan did a double-take last week when one of his Holstein Friesian cows delivered a set of twins, one Hereford bull calf and one female Limousin.
“I usually use AI for the first third of the herd. After that, I have a Hereford and a Limousin bull. I alternate between them,” he told the Dealer.
“Sometimes you could have a brown Hereford, but as they weren’t presenting right, it wasn’t until they were fully born that I realised that it had no white at all; it was just a brown Limousin.”
It turns out that each of the twin calves was sired by one of the bulls.
The phenomenon is called heteropaternal superfecundation and, according to ICBF research, occurs in less than 1% of twin bovine births.
World record €22,600 for sheepdog
I see a world record working sheepdog price was set at Skipton Auction Mart in the UK, when Emma Gray’s two-and-a-half-year-old bitch Megan was sold for 18,000gns (€22,644) last Friday. She shattered the record of 14,100gns (€17,738) set in 2016 by Padraig Doherty of Ardagh Sheepdogs. Eleven-year-old Olivia McLaughlin from Donegal made her mark in the unbroken pen at the sale, with 1,600gns for her nine-month-old black dog, Jim.
Beefy Bryan chairs Glanbia think tank
The Dealer hears former IFA supremo John Bryan has landed the plum role of chair for the Teagasc-Glanbia monitor farm programme, launched late last year.
The Teagasc-Glanbia staffers group meet regularly to form an overarching view on policy adopted on the 11 monitor dairy farms and to make sure all the Glanbia suppliers are doing it the Glanbia way – buying GAIN feed only, purchasing gas from Calor, genetics from Dovea and borrowing money from Finance Ireland. It’s called a closed loop.
I can only imagine what was said at the think tank about one of Jimmy Brett’s lorries landing in with feed as visitors gathered for a farm walk on one of the Glanbia monitor farms. Did he get shown the road I wonder?
Fly-tippers in England were taught a lesson when farmers went on a reconnaissance mission to track the address on a letter in a large heap of rubbish left on their land.
In the dead of night, farmers scooped up the offending material and delicately tipped it back into the original owners’ suburban backyard.
A video of the revenge mission appeared on the social media and The Dealer hopes it serves as a warning to other fly-tippers.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, William and Catherine, are to visit Teagasc Grange next week. The trip to the Meath college, in the royal county no less, is part of+ their first official tour to the Republic of Ireland, taking place from Tuesday 3 March until Thursday 5 March. I’m told they will be visiting Grange on Thursday 4 March. The Dealer is wondering … will they be brought to see the suckler demonstration or the dairy calf to beef demonstration?
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