This was the opinion of Teagasc advisor, John McNamara, who said that changing cattle for cows was a "no brainer".

Mr McNamara was speaking at the Irish Grassland Association's conference on dairy farming in Cork on Wednesday. However, he warned farmers not to reduce their cattle enterprise until such time as they had the quota in place to increase cow numbers.

"It has been easy to say over the years that cattle are leaving no money, so therefore, get rid of them, but I have found in practice that, unless the farm was able to increase milk production, profits reduced," he said.

He added that the swap would not be without costs in either housing or infrastructure, but that it still made sense to do this.

Mr McNamara made his presentation on options for expanding the farm to make a profit. He said it was very hard to do this without mentioning "the two big elephants" of Irish farming, the Nitrates Directive and the milk quota system.

Source: Irish Independent