We are slowly cranking up to sell the beef cattle as they become fit.

Because we are a controlled finishing unit, we are allowed to buy in stores from reactor herds and if we have a reactor, we can continue to sell cattle to the factory.

It’s a sensible, pragmatic way of organising things so that farms do not come to a standstill because of a TB outbreak while the potential spread of bovine TB is minimised.

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In fact, we have not had a TB reactor for several years, but the other side of the coin is that we are not allowed sell cattle in a mart.

Normally this doesn’t bother me as the assumption has to be that the two outlets will return roughly the same. This year, I am not so sure.

The core question of course is: have the key players so many cattle of their own or partly financed by them that they can stay out of purchasing at farm level and force the price down?

Our load of cattle this week made slightly less per kg than the load we sold just before Christmas, which as I mentioned at the time, made 50c/kg less than the last load of the season we sold in mid-October, yet all the reports indicated that most prices had hardened since Christmas rather than the reverse.

The core question of course is: have the key players so many cattle of their own or partly financed by them that they can stay out of purchasing at farm level and force the price down? I was interested in reading some of the original NFA/IFA policy proposals that they intended to ensure that vertical integration like this would not be allowed.

With the concentration of factory ownership, perhaps this aspiration should be revisited.

We are taking note of areas that need some form of subsoiling or drainage

Out on the land, with the continuous broken weather everything is at a standstill.

We haven’t spread any slurry or fertiliser on either the grassland or the tillage ground.

We are taking note of areas that need some form of subsoiling or drainage when conditions improve or after the harvest.

One of the spots is directly below a high voltage ESB line which makes operating a digger too dangerous. The ESB has rightly drawn attention to the danger of high-voltage current jumping from the wire to large machinery operating directly below with potentially fatal consequences, but when we get a chance to fix the problem we will have to ask that the current be switched off for a while.

This brings home to me the ongoing potential inconvenience of having high voltage lines crossing the farm as well as the interference for field work of pylons – unfortunately they went in well before the new compensation levels applied!