Livestock Farmer Focus: Victor Chestnutt is looking for a Charolais sire

The recent dry spell has transformed the Northern Ireland landscape, with fieldwork practically all finished, although later than optimum, ground conditions have been good.

All we need now is for temperatures to rise and a little rain to provide a burst of growth. Silage and grass swards are behind, although given the improved ground conditions, we have turned out most cattle to where the grass should be and the dairy cows are getting out each afternoon.

There are still a few ewes left to lamb, but enthusiasm for lambing has waned and the idea of serving any empties after the first scanning doesn’t seem to have been such a good idea after all.

Milk prices are looking brighter, with a base of 24p for March and hopefully any further rises will mean the dairy enterprise will hopefully start to repay some of the debts incurred in the set up. On the minus side, fuel and fertiliser seem to be on a steady climb and a breakdown in farm machinery always seems to cost more than expected.

As our politicians make all sorts of promises for an election here in Northern Ireland, with a land border with another EU state we would appreciate an all-Ireland animal health policy to free up movement, and some more common sense to be applied to trading with the rest of the UK.

At present I’m keen to source a young herd sire for our Charolais. However, on viewing the Carlisle catalogue, only 14 out of the 220 bulls entered seem to be eligible to be imported after 30 days, with the rest needing a totally impractical 90 days.

Could someone please inform our department that the scientific case for scrapie genotyping has disappeared, so why is our government spending needless money on an outdated scheme?

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