The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
IN a week that has been marked by tales of a serious fodder shortage, Querrin farmer Daithí Scanlan has apparently eschewed convention.
An array of recently harvested round bales are visible in Tarmon East, near Poulnasherry Bay. The only problem is that the field is too wet to allow Daithí to extract his newly minted round bales.
“A picture can tell a thousand words but maybe not this time. They’re not great bales. You’d want a helicopter to get them out,” he laughed, when describing the quality of his out-of-season hay. “It was hay that I hadn’t cut last year. We got a chance to cut it and bale it recently but we couldn’t take them out of the field then, it got so wet again.”
He doesn’t think the bales would be devoured by his cattle, even if he could remove them from the sodden field.
“I don’t think you could use them, it got so wet. I can’t rescue them now anyway. It’s pretty bad around here. If it doesn’t clear in the next 10 days, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Everywhere is wet. It’s catastrophic at the moment. Everybody is in trouble now. It’s not just a few,” he noted.
Just this week, Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney announced details of a €1m emergency transport package to help farmers who are short of fodder. The minister said the initiative would cut the cost of a bale of hay by one-third.
Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) president John Bryan has said farmers are using meal to increase their fodder supplies and are running up significant bills with suppliers as a result.
