Irish Examiner - Thursday, 29th November 2018
Pat Aherne could best be described as a typical, thriving, ambitious dairy farmer.
Pat milks a 100-cow herd, grass fed 300 days of the year.
Pat is married with a young family and farms just outside Cork city, his nearest neighbour is Cork Airport.
While running a successful enterprise, Pat wants what is best for himself and his family but also for his herd, and a desire for improvement in herd well-being has taken him down the road of homeopathy.
“I had a major outbreak of mastitis eight years ago.
“I literally had 21 cases in the space of three weeks, 16 cases were being treated at the one time,” said Pat.
“I remember coming into the parlour one morning and feeling like I was going into a war against nature, and that I wasn’t winning the battle.”
Finally, Pat got on top of the outbreak, but not before vowing to never again subject his cows to the same level of antibiotic treatment.
“It was unsustainable economically, as well as taking its toll on both man and beast.”
It was then, by pure accident, that Pat happened upon homeopathic remedies as a way of treating his cattle. He started using them in 2010, and believes they helped to stabilise cell counts, reduce use of antibiotics, and speed up recovery from mastitis. The improvement was confirmed by a string of co-op milk quality awards, including an East Cork region win, one of the top six awards for supplying the best quality milk to Dairygold Co-op throughout 2016.
“With the help of homeopathy treatments, to my amazement, everything stabilised.”
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