The target opening date for the 2025 National Beef Welfare Scheme is mid-August 2025. The timeline comes following a meeting between officials from the Department of Agriculture and farm organisations on Thursday.

The reason for the scheme not opening until August is for administration purposes. Calves eligible for payment will be those born between 1 July 2024 and 30 June 2025.

Delaying the opening of the scheme until this date allows the Department to base the online application portal on the number of eligible animals on which a herd’s potential maximum payment will be based.

Actions included

There is no change to the actions previously reported by the Irish Farmers Journal in February 2025. The main element of the scheme will remain based on creep feeding of calves pre- and post-weaning. This mandatory action will be paid at a rate of €35 per calf.

Farmers can once again opt to voluntarily participate in additional actions. The first of these are the same as in the 2024 scheme and includes clostridial disease or pneumonia vaccination. The payment for completion of this action is €15 per calf.

There is a new component to the scheme in 2025 allowing farmers to draw down an additional payment of €25 per head. Farmers can again select between two options.

The first of these is carrying out analysis on a minimum of three silage (forage) samples or two faecal egg samples. The exact details are not yet known on these actions as the terms and conditions will now be finalised following today’s meeting.

Maximum payment

This brings the total potential payment to €75 per cow and according to IFA livestock chairman Declan Hanrahan payment will be based on a maximum of 45 head. This is five head more than in the 2024 scheme year.

Declan Hanrahan said that he was disappointed that the Department of Agriculture had retained an upper limit in the number of animals eligible for payment, citing that it disadvantages a small percentage but an important cohort of large-scale producers.

The maximum payment for a farm participating in both voluntary actions on 45 cows/calves is €3,375. This is €1,375 higher than in 2024.

Maximum participation

The IFA livestock chair is advising all suckler farmers to consider joining the scheme. He said that the €28m in funding allocated to the scheme is an important funding resource for the suckler sector and it is important that this is utilised.

He added that this scheme when combined with the Suckler Carbon Efficiency Programme (SCEP) brings total direct supports for suckler cows up to €225/cow for 45 cows.

“Bringing payments on suckler cows to €225/cow is important but this payment does not come without costs for participating farmers. The Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon must make good on his election promises to bring total suckler cow supports to a minimum of €300/cow and remove the cost incurred income forgone criteria."

The maximum payment for a farm participating in both voluntary actions on 45 cows/calves is €3,375. This is €1,375 higher than in 2024.

Farmers completing actions are reminded to retain a record of meal feeding dates, health treatments administered etc and also to retain relevant invoices.