Post by 3cows on May 13, 2016 10:10:21 GMT -5
Here in Tassie, about the greenest place I have ever walked across, I am spending $300 a week on hay for 10 lowline & dexter cows.
$300 a week on my itty bitty herd. That's not counting the sweet feed Flora is getting, or what I feed the sheep.
Possibly many of you won't have heard what just went down here.
I can't imagine the dairy next door's feed bill, nor the sick feeling in their gut this last couple of days because their farmgate price of milk has just been smashed.
In an act of gross mismanagement (the CEO of one company pocketed $10 million in bonuses over the last couple of years and quit the day of the price cut ...) the milk prices dropped below production costs AND the companies want repayment of "overpaid" monies for the previous part of the season adding up to hundreds of thousands of dollars for some families.
Two suicides already, in a matter of days. Many of the herds that calve at the opposite end of the season are drying up their cows early, the ones that are calving now don't know what to do. I have seen, today with my own eyes, four truckloads of dairy cows come up my little road on their way to slaughter. The double tankers that go past my gate every day are now single tankers. All over southern Aus dairies are looking bankruptcy in the eye.
I know that girl pictured above looks rough, but she will probably get bought and turned around.
Hundreds of beautiful girls will pass my home over the next week that can have only one destination, and I SPIT ON the execs and boards that put people in that position the same week rains came to many dairy farming areas to put hope back into the season.
I hope the people that flocked to buy cheap no-label milk are going to enjoy their chinese UHT.
I haven't been keeping up with the news locally or around the world. elnini - am I understanding this correctly? Is your dairy industry being taken over by the Chinese UHT milk? Horrible...