A leading vet has called on the Department of Agriculture to allow the sale and movement of animals between farms. He said it would prevent a major welfare problem caused by the build-up of stocks which cannot be moved.
Mr Sean O Laoide, vice-president of Veterinary Ireland, said there were two areas in the country reaching crisis point, dairy farms in the south and smaller farms in the west which normally sold younger cattle at this time of year.
Mr O Laoide said farmers with dairy herds normally kept only a small number of their calves as replacements and quickly sold on the rest to farmers in the west.
"There is not so much a fodder shortage here because dairy farms have milk, but a problem of facilities. Most dairy farmers do not have the housing to keep the animals longer than a few weeks," he said.
He said there was a serious danger of diseases such as scour and pneumonia if calves were kept in overcrowded conditions. This was now beginning to happen. The shortage of fodder was beginning to cause concern in the west at a time when smaller livestock farmers would be selling their store cattle to farmers in the midlands and east who would fatten them.
"Many of the farmers in the west do not have sufficient fodder for their animals because they expected to have them sold on at this stage and replaced with calves from the south.
"We are fast approaching the time when the Department of Agriculture most allow farmers to sell on their animals to other farmers and this can be done if there is a pre-movement veterinary inspection of the animals.
An IFA spokesman said: "There is a build-up of calves in the south but in the west, where there is a growing shortage of fodder, we are concerned that farmers are beginning to graze the early grass to provide feeding," he said.
"This could mean a total disruption of the silage season because it appears to us that farmers are being forced to use up their silage fields now."
He said the IFA had estimated that it cost about £6 a week to feed the young store animals in the west and that many of the smaller farmers could not afford that and were resorting to using up their grass stocks.
"On the other hand, we have a situation where there are farmers in the midlands and east who have already sold their finished animals for slaughter and they have grass but they have no animals," he said.
Since the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Britain, marts have been banned in this State, and for more than three weeks the movement of animals between farms has been banned.
Animals can be moved only for veterinary or welfare reasons, and a permit must be obtained from the Department of Agriculture.