Farmers say cattle are coping with the extreme weather, but if temperatures rise and the warm spell continues into next week, their herds and livelihoods could be in serious trouble.
In Cork, the highest temperature on Wednesday was at Moorepark in Fermoy, reaching 27.9 degrees – less than 40 kms from Buttevant dairy farmer, John Coughlan.
“The cattle are going for the shade every day – they will be stuck under trees and we have a good share of trees on ditches here – 23, 24, 25 degrees is all right for animals but if you go beyond that and there was a prolonged heatwave of 27 or 28 degrees, there would be consequences.”
Coughlan, who milks 140 cows on his extensive holding, said it was important to ensure animals have plenty of water. “I’m not measuring it but you know well they are drinking water the whole time,” he said.
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“There’s plenty of grass for them as well because we had so much rain all along there is plenty of moisture in the ground and that will last to the weekend at any rate – once you go up to 30 degrees, it starts to burn grass but there’s a lot of top quality hay being made at the moment.”
For beef farmer Tommy Moyles, who is rearing more than 100 store cattle outside Clonakilty in west Cork, the heat is proving less problematic as his farm is located within a few hundred metres of the coast. A cooling sea breeze ensures his animals are not getting stressed.
“We are very close to the sea here, so there is a good breeze. So the thing is to make sure that they have plenty of water, so you are checking the drinkers constantly – to be honest, we had a two or three hot days in May that came out of nowhere and I think they were hotter,” he said.
“I’m not hearing of any farmers having problems at the moment with their animals – once they have good grass and water in front of them, they will thrive but if we got a good run of weather pushing 30 degrees it could be a very different story.”
In Lissarda in mid-Cork, dairy farmer Trevor Crowley agrees about last month – the thermometer on the wall of his farmyard hit 30 degrees in May, whereas at the moment, the mercury was tipping 26 degrees.
“We kept all our ditches and we have loads of trees and I have one field with trees all round it so no matter what way the sun is coming, there is shading for the cows. They’re not eating much ... only for the shade, they’d be rightly banjaxed.”
Crowley agrees that anything over 25 degrees spells trouble for cattle, particularly if it goes on for any prolonged period. He has already noticed that over the last two days, the milk yield from his 150 cows is down 250 litres due to heat-related stress.
But he is not unduly worried and points out that the temperatures are due to drop back by 10 degrees within the next few days. That will ensure there is no repeat of conditions in 1976 when sustained hot weather caused serious problems for farmers.
“[It] was an absolute cracker of a summer – I don’t think the temperatures went as high as 30, but it was a prolonged warm spell of weather and that year, water got scarce, grass got scarce, and farmers were put to the pin of their collar,” he recalled.
“There was a drought back in 2018, but this isn’t a drought; this is just high temperatures and the weather is forecast to break. We’re still above ground and I know you will hear farmers moaning from time to time and the rest of it but this all passes – no matter what crisis you face, it passes.”
