This year’s fodder deficits were not caused by overstocking, according to deputy president of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association (ICMSA) Lorcan McCabe.

McCabe was speaking on the issue of fodder shortages alongside Teagasc cattle specialist Karen Dukelow to presenter Claire Mc Cormack on the latest episode of FarmLand.

“It’s not overstocking because we have relatively the same stock in the country as we’ve had; the stock hasn’t gone up that much,” the deputy president asserted.

“There are people who say that; I suppose they’re fixated on the dairy farmer who has increased from 50 cows to 110, but most of them are efficient farmers.”

McCabe said that the shortage is across the board, noting that those who expanded are no worse off than others who didn’t.

We’re after the whole wet back end of last year, a late spring, and straight into drought this year, so no, I wouldn’t put the blame on the people that have expanded.

The deputy president did note that there was a difference between a 10% shortfall for 200 cows in comparison for 50 cows, but proportionately, he contended that they are no worse off.

Dukelow gave her view on whether overstocking is to blame, highlighting that, at local level, there have been some issues.

“Well obviously, as Lorcan was saying, if you have more cows and you end up with a percentage deficit, it’s going to be harder to fill that gap.

“And, in certain localities, that caused a local deficit, where there were large herds in a small area buying up fodder last year.”

However, the cattle specialist noted that the most recent survey shed some light on the matter.

When we did the survey in September, the level of shortage was actually pretty evenly spread across enterprises, both beef and dairy, and across stocking rates which is kind of surprising.

“But, when you think about it, if farms are used to operating a certain stocking rate, they’re used to producing that much grass, and would have been all hit almost the same amount by the weather conditions to a certain percentage. So it’s across the board,” Dukelow said.