400 is quite some collection of dead calves. There’s just no excuse for this.
You’d get around 100 per calf, doesn’t seem efficient
If any farmer wants to get rid of a calf I’ll take it.
Love a bit of tender beef.
IFA getting ready to roll out the ‘few bad apples’ line.
If lessons can’t be learned it’s because there’s a few bad apples.
This farmer is apparently “struggling to cope”, which is code for “he’s having a prolonged issue with his mental health and the farm’s gotten away from him”. This isn’t an uncommon phenomenon, although the scale of it is unusual.
Farms can sometimes be left – with good intentions – to the son who might not have been… expected to make his own way, as a way of trying to ensure he’s provided for. Or else, the son who inherits the farm often feels like it’s not really up to him if he wants to keep it, even if he’s not up to it.
Farming is a lonely lifestyle, it’s hard enough to meet someone in farming at the best of times, but these types tend to end up isolated auld lads who won’t spend or make money, and take on a lot of the behaviours you see with habitual hoarders.
It isn’t a business or a vocation for them, it’s just the only thing they know to spend their days at, so improving or progressing the farm isn’t even a consideration – it’s more of a mental routine than a working concern, so they’ll just keep doing what they’ve always done even as the farm falls down around them because nothing’s ever replaced or updated, or the herd gets out of control because they can’t adjust to anything unexpected.
The Department will try to avoid prosecution at first in situations like that, and will often informally enlist relatives or other local farmers to help bring the stock down to a manageable level and get things in order (which they seem to suggest was attempted here), but sadly it is the kind of thing where they tend to fall back into the same rut the second they’re left to their own devices.
The outcome is unquestionably animal cruelty, but you have to understand something like this through the same lens as a cat hoarder rather than a deliberate sadist or just economic ruthlessness.
Edit –
I knew of a few farmers who went this way and despite having huge farms/herds they were all the time out working with, they were living like paupers, because they could never keep on top of paperwork or ingoings and outgoings, they kept doing everything old fashioned ways that make no sense anymore, and most of their energy was going into hiding how badly out of control things had gotten.
When one lad passed away, it became apparent he’d been living on tinned dog food because his kitchen was full of random scrap and bits of machinery he presumably meant to “fix”, so he couldn’t put on any kind of dinner for himself. Just the half of the farm he wasn’t using was worth millions. He could have died in the lap of luxury on a beach in Spain.
I’ve said it before; the vast majority of male dairy calves, excepting some high quality breeding bulls, should be euthanised painlessly at birth. This would provde benefits in:
Animal welfare- these are the most likely cattle to be neglected. There are lads who but them for half nothing them try to rear them for half nothing.
Carbon emissions-this would reduce the national herd by nearly 8%, and of the of the least efficient animals for food production.
Farming economy-take the lowest quality and most expensively produced beef off the market. Teagasc worked out the cost of rearing one of these calves to slaughter is €5 greater than the value of the meat produced.
If you find this suggestion morally repugnant, them I hope you don’t drink goat’s milk. This has been common practice in the dairy goat industry for decades.
Forgive my ignorance but what’s the point of just killing the calves and letting them rot? Surely they could be used for food or even animal feed? Bones used for something? Surely there is money to be made rather than a field full of rotting cows. I’d be happy to spend a few euro for cheap, not great quality calf meat I could turn into a decent meal. Seems like such a waste
Custodians of the land
There was a dairy farmer near me who had let things slide one winter.
It had been a shite summer so he had fuck all decent silage, and the price of hay, silage and straw that year went through the roof. It was around the time of the milk quota abolishment so the price of milk had gone down. Same man also suffers from depression.
Two cows had been dead in his yard for 2 weeks. My dad, also a dairy farmer, and a few others reached out and had a chat with him and it was pretty dire. Don’t know the specifics other than that, but they helped as best they could. He got back on top of things and thankfully has been grand since.
I’ve had to look after the farm for weeks at a time, and honestly it can be a struggle at the best of times. It’s grand in the summer when the weather’s good and milk yield is up, but in the winter everything is cold, you’re up and its dark, you go to start the evening milk and its dark, muck everywhere and the animals are more dirty from being housed, all with less milk yield and the stress of calving season.
I don’t know how dairy farmers do it at times. Dad has had broken bones at different times from being kicked in the dairy, ignored them for weeks and didn’t slow down nor complain.
It’s an incredibly tough and lonely lifestyle, especially in smaller dairy farms (60 odd milkers) in more rural areas. Not that I’m excusing 400 dead animals mind, just a bit of insight.
The head in the sand from Teagasc and farming bodies, means they have no plan or solution to this except pin it on one overstressed farmer who was left with no solution to what is a systemic problem every year. …And so make it much worse for any farmer who has similar problem next spring.
How can Kerrygold and others show happy cows in greenfields ,when the truth is many of the calves will only experience pain and hinger in pens beside those fields.
The burgers will be cheaper in the nearest town for a few months
12 comments
Scum
400 is quite some collection of dead calves. There’s just no excuse for this.
You’d get around 100 per calf, doesn’t seem efficient
If any farmer wants to get rid of a calf I’ll take it.
Love a bit of tender beef.
IFA getting ready to roll out the ‘few bad apples’ line.
If lessons can’t be learned it’s because there’s a few bad apples.
This farmer is apparently “struggling to cope”, which is code for “he’s having a prolonged issue with his mental health and the farm’s gotten away from him”. This isn’t an uncommon phenomenon, although the scale of it is unusual.
Farms can sometimes be left – with good intentions – to the son who might not have been… expected to make his own way, as a way of trying to ensure he’s provided for. Or else, the son who inherits the farm often feels like it’s not really up to him if he wants to keep it, even if he’s not up to it.
Farming is a lonely lifestyle, it’s hard enough to meet someone in farming at the best of times, but these types tend to end up isolated auld lads who won’t spend or make money, and take on a lot of the behaviours you see with habitual hoarders.
It isn’t a business or a vocation for them, it’s just the only thing they know to spend their days at, so improving or progressing the farm isn’t even a consideration – it’s more of a mental routine than a working concern, so they’ll just keep doing what they’ve always done even as the farm falls down around them because nothing’s ever replaced or updated, or the herd gets out of control because they can’t adjust to anything unexpected.
The Department will try to avoid prosecution at first in situations like that, and will often informally enlist relatives or other local farmers to help bring the stock down to a manageable level and get things in order (which they seem to suggest was attempted here), but sadly it is the kind of thing where they tend to fall back into the same rut the second they’re left to their own devices.
The outcome is unquestionably animal cruelty, but you have to understand something like this through the same lens as a cat hoarder rather than a deliberate sadist or just economic ruthlessness.
Edit –
I knew of a few farmers who went this way and despite having huge farms/herds they were all the time out working with, they were living like paupers, because they could never keep on top of paperwork or ingoings and outgoings, they kept doing everything old fashioned ways that make no sense anymore, and most of their energy was going into hiding how badly out of control things had gotten.
When one lad passed away, it became apparent he’d been living on tinned dog food because his kitchen was full of random scrap and bits of machinery he presumably meant to “fix”, so he couldn’t put on any kind of dinner for himself. Just the half of the farm he wasn’t using was worth millions. He could have died in the lap of luxury on a beach in Spain.
I’ve said it before; the vast majority of male dairy calves, excepting some high quality breeding bulls, should be euthanised painlessly at birth. This would provde benefits in:
Animal welfare- these are the most likely cattle to be neglected. There are lads who but them for half nothing them try to rear them for half nothing.
Carbon emissions-this would reduce the national herd by nearly 8%, and of the of the least efficient animals for food production.
Farming economy-take the lowest quality and most expensively produced beef off the market. Teagasc worked out the cost of rearing one of these calves to slaughter is €5 greater than the value of the meat produced.
If you find this suggestion morally repugnant, them I hope you don’t drink goat’s milk. This has been common practice in the dairy goat industry for decades.
Forgive my ignorance but what’s the point of just killing the calves and letting them rot? Surely they could be used for food or even animal feed? Bones used for something? Surely there is money to be made rather than a field full of rotting cows. I’d be happy to spend a few euro for cheap, not great quality calf meat I could turn into a decent meal. Seems like such a waste
Custodians of the land
There was a dairy farmer near me who had let things slide one winter.
It had been a shite summer so he had fuck all decent silage, and the price of hay, silage and straw that year went through the roof. It was around the time of the milk quota abolishment so the price of milk had gone down. Same man also suffers from depression.
Two cows had been dead in his yard for 2 weeks. My dad, also a dairy farmer, and a few others reached out and had a chat with him and it was pretty dire. Don’t know the specifics other than that, but they helped as best they could. He got back on top of things and thankfully has been grand since.
I’ve had to look after the farm for weeks at a time, and honestly it can be a struggle at the best of times. It’s grand in the summer when the weather’s good and milk yield is up, but in the winter everything is cold, you’re up and its dark, you go to start the evening milk and its dark, muck everywhere and the animals are more dirty from being housed, all with less milk yield and the stress of calving season.
I don’t know how dairy farmers do it at times. Dad has had broken bones at different times from being kicked in the dairy, ignored them for weeks and didn’t slow down nor complain.
It’s an incredibly tough and lonely lifestyle, especially in smaller dairy farms (60 odd milkers) in more rural areas. Not that I’m excusing 400 dead animals mind, just a bit of insight.
The head in the sand from Teagasc and farming bodies, means they have no plan or solution to this except pin it on one overstressed farmer who was left with no solution to what is a systemic problem every year. …And so make it much worse for any farmer who has similar problem next spring.
How can Kerrygold and others show happy cows in greenfields ,when the truth is many of the calves will only experience pain and hinger in pens beside those fields.
The burgers will be cheaper in the nearest town for a few months