The Waiting Game and the Winterage

Donkeys on our winterage overlooking Galway Bay

All is quiet in Caherconnell this week.  Two of the puppies have gone to new homes and there are two more probably going in the next few days! *sniff, sniff.  They'l be missed!! After all, is there anything more adorable, cute and wonderful than puppies??!

Otherwise, the weather has calmed down, the cows are lining up to calve and we are in that edgy, restless, anxious phase of waiting when you try to relax and enjoy the momentary calm...but it is impossible when you know the storm is going to break at any minute!

The accounts are done as are the projections for 2015, but there is still some fiddly financial bits to work out so we have our ducks in a row!

                                  

The projected milk price for this year is 26c/27c a litre, so it will be a very tough year for any farmers new to dairying or who have big loans.  I hope they can make it through!

What you might not realise is that most dairy farmers need a milk price of 27c a litre to break-even, and that is with all the European funding.  A big fuss is made on occasion about farmers getting huge grants of money -but the reality is that these aren't grants; these are a means of keeping farm produce at low prices.  If farmers didn't have that supplementation we would be operating at a loss, stop producing our goods and the price of all dairy products, beef, chicken, eggs, pork, cereals, vegetables etc. would go through the roof.  That would continue until the natural economics of supply and demand stabilised the price where it naturally should be i.e. much higher than it is now!

                                

Sorry slight rant there! ;) So moving on, while our dairy cows are snug and cosy in their shed there are some beef cattle up on the mountain for the winter.  I can already here you exclaim in shock and outrage - animals outside in this weather!  Well there is a bit more to it than that:

This mountain is part of the Burren winterage, a limestone area of (small) mountains where animals spend the winter outside and are able to forage and survive with little or no additional feed.  This is because of the special ecological conditions, namely the warmth of the limestone and the mineral rich grass which grows there.  This "winterage" is unique to the mountainous region of the Burren in Co. Clare and it is quite funny to think that, as farmers everywhere else bring their cattle down out of the mountain, we are putting ours up! Only in Ireland!! ;)
We currently keep beef cattle (Charolais & Limousin) on this winterage between October and March and keep them in the grassland valley below for the rest of the year. As you can see they are happy out:

Cattle on the winterage

That is it for this week but maybe next time I'll have some newborn calf photos for you! :)