Published: Wednesday, 6th January, 2010 5:00pm

Farmers cope with worst of weather

by Brian O'Loughlin

Robert Kells and his daughter Rowena looking after their sheep on their land at Drumlane lake. Though it's difficult to see here, the ground and lake are frozen solid. Photo: Lorraine Teevan
Pic by==: 97

The farmers of Cavan appear to be coping reasonably well with the weather, if the experience of sheep farmer Robert Kells is any indication.

Yesterday (Tuesday) morning The Anglo-Celt visited him at Drummanny, Milltown, where he has a shed of 500 six to eight-month-old lambs that weren't suffering too much from the cold - as far as the inexperienced eye could see.

The weather is affecting Robert's business to an extent, but he is managing well so far. Every morning he has to de-ice the water pipes and drinkers for the lambs, and he has received regular supplies of the meal that is critical to fatten the animals for market.

The one thing he hasn't done with the latest intake of lambs is shear them (a job he normally does himself using his shearing trailer), as they need their woolly coats in the sub-zero temperatures. "I would normally shear them when they arrive, after a week or 10 days on their new diet, and these lambs are now in more than a month," said Robert. He shears the animals as they thrive better, they're cleaner and the factories prefer them that way.

Overall Robert finds the weather a challenge but it's not stopping him. He says that his enterprise would've been worse off if the number of breeding ewes hadn't reduced from 1,000 to 500 - "otherwise we'd be in trouble" - and he had to bring lambs in early because there was no grass on the land.

Meal deliveries are difficult because of the condition of the roads to most farms, but Robert can handle 10 tonnes at a time and he was lucky that the day he ran out last week it thawed briefly, and rained, and the mill made the delivery the following day.

Overall he is positive about how things are going: "If ever there was a year to fatten lambs, it's this one, because the roads are so bad they aren't bringing the same numbers in from England and Scotland." He says this means the factory price of good, well-fleshed lambs has gone up by €20-25 to about €85-90.

Robert has a passion for sheep and travels the length and breadth of Cavan and neighbouring counties with his shearing trailer, a mobile system that makes the job easy and efficient for farmers.

Gerry McCabe, the Cavan IFA Sheep Committee chairman, is also reasonably positive: "From what I see round the county the biggest trouble is commuting to outlying land, and most men have houses and stock inside. Where there can be big problems is if the mills can't get meal out to us, but so far they are getting out to make deliveries."

The IFA development officer for this region is Anthony Clinton, who says farmers are better prepared than they were 10 or 15 years ago; pipes are well lagged, sheds are insulated and there don't appear to be many problems with freezing heating oil. Anthony says the farming community are looking in on vulnerable neighbours but some are worrying that fodder could run out if the weather doesn't break, and the mid-January date for slurry spreading is looming.

The danger is that quantities of slurry are building up and when the thaw finally comes the land might be too soft for machinery to get out and spread it.

Overall though, the message appears to be that Cavan farmers are well prepared and they're coping with the coldest weather since the 1960s.

Return to: Homepage | News Index | This article