Animal Health Ireland (AHI) has said that its CalfCare events that were supposed to take place this month have been cancelled, in light of the increasing Covid-19 case numbers.
AHI is instead planning to hold a number of online events instead, it is understood.
In a tweet this afternoon (Thursday, January 6), AHI said: “Due to Covid, our on-farm CalfCare events scheduled to be held around the country over the next three weeks have been cancelled.
“We intend to run an online calf rearing webinar and will have more information available early next week.”
The events, which are run in conjunction with Teagasc, were set to take place under the theme of ‘Calf Rearing for Tomorrow’s Herd’.
The 12 events were due to be held on farms in various counties, including Cork, Limerick, Kilkenny, Waterford, Tipperary, Carlow, Meath, Cavan and Donegal.
Each was set to be sponsored by one or more co-ops. These included Dairygold, Kerry, Glanbia, Arrabawn, Lakeland and Aurivo.
Dairygold, which was set to sponsor or co-sponsor the first two events, said in a tweet yesterday that those events – on January 10 and 12 – would instead take place in an online format, and that further details would be announced “in due course”.
In other Covid-19 related news, Bord Bia will temporarily return to remote audits for the various quality assurance schemes, it has said.
The move is understood to be in response to the escalating Covid-19 case figures.
It was only on November 1 that Bord Bia returned to on-farm audits, after originally introducing remote audits in 2020 shortly after the onset of the pandemic.
Remote audits consist of phonecalls and the online uploading of relevant documents, rather than actual on-farm visits.
Back in October, Bord Bia said that it was planning to eventually use a ‘blended approach’ to audits, which would combine the remote process with a physical farm inspection.
The food promotion board has now confirmed that this blended system will be put in place from February.