Teagasc, the State farm advisory service, has warned that the animal feed problem, particularly on dry stock farms, is being compounded by the removal of credit facilities by some feed merchants and co-operative stores.
A Teagasc spokesman said that since the start of this week, farmers had been telling it that some companies were reluctant to advance any more credit to cover animal feed payments.
On the claim by the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals that thousands of animals would starve unless the Government declared a disaster, Teagasc said there was no need for this to happen. "Our advice to farmers is to ration silage or hay and supplement with compound feed," Mr Donal Carey, director of operations with Teagasc, said. It had highlighted the problem since August and had mounted an advisory campaign. The Department of Agriculture, which had earlier denied the ISPCA claim, said the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, was lobbying the Department of Finance for additional funding to help farmers deal with the crisis.
A Department of Agriculture spokesman said it had already paid out about £12 million to farmers for fodder before Christmas and a further £4 million to reduce ewe stock in the west.
The IFA president, Mr Tom Parlon, said the Government must face up to the scale of the fodder crisis.