The 2024 Beef Welfare Scheme (BWS) opened on Thursday, 8 August, and will remain open for applications until Tuesday, 24 September.

There are two actions in the scheme, one mandatory and one voluntary, with a maximum payment of €2,000 for all actions at the maximum of 40 calves.

Payments to successful applicants are expected to be made in December 2024, the Department of Agriculture has said.

Here is what you need to know.

Eligibility

Eligible applicants must be 18 or older, the holder of an active herd number with herd owner status, be farming a holding that submitted a Basic Income Support for Sustainability (BISS) application in 2024 and be a suckler farmer.

Under the scheme, an eligible suckler calf must be born into the herd of the applicant between 1 July 2023 and 30 June 2024. It must be born out of an eligible suckler cow and sired by a beef breed bull.

The herd should intend to rear calves for meat production. Where the herd has both a milking herd and a beef herd, only calves reared by their dam are eligible.

Application process

Applications can be made online at www.agfood.ie by you or an approved adviser on your behalf. Late applications and amendments after the closing date will not be accepted.

Requirements

There are two actions under the scheme. Action one is meal feeding, which is mandatory.

Action two is vaccination, which is voluntary. You cannot vaccinate more calves than you meal-feed.

At application stage you will be presented with the number of eligible calves in your herd for the scheme. You can select less than this number.

The maximum number of calves allowed for a single herd under the scheme is 40.

As per the scheme’s requirements, meal feeding must be done for a period of four weeks pre-weaning and two weeks post-weaning to reduce the stress on calves at weaning time.

Calves must be supplemented with compound feed stuffs containing appropriate minerals and vitamins.

Receipts, invoices and labels of all compound feed stuffs and/or straights (feed materials), as well as complementary mineral mixtures purchased must be kept for the purpose of inspection and administrative checks.

The voluntary vaccination measure must be for clostridial diseases and/or calf pneumonia in suckler calves.

The payment rate is the same whether you vaccinate against one or both diseases. A record must be kept by each participant of the purchase and use of the vaccines.

If you wish to be considered eligible for payment under the vaccination action, you must select this when you apply for the scheme.

Payment rates

The payment rate per eligible calf for meal feeding is €35. At a maximum of 40, this brings the maximum payment per applicant under this action to €1,400.

For vaccination, the payment is €15/eligible calf. At the maximum number of calves this is €600.

Conditions

The Department has listed among the scheme conditions that if the scheme is oversubscribed there will be a linear reduction to the payment amount or a decrease to the maximum number of animals eligible for payment.

Farm partnerships

Those in a farm partnership are eligible for the scheme.

A single herd farm partnership is eligible for 40 calves, a dual herd farm partnership is eligible for 80 calves at a maximum of 40 calves per herd and a multi-herd farm partnership is eligible for 120 calves at a maximum of 40 calves per herd.