Taking over Beef Farming on 30 Acres, a lot of questions!

NewBeefFarmer

Hi all,
Due to circumstances of life as it happens, my dad isnt able to farm the 30 acres anymore, and since i live next to it, i feel its time to make him proud, and keep my self content that i can actually do it and farm the land myself. I helped out when i was in school, but once college came and working away, i hav'nt been around, but in the last few years ive came home and settled down.

I am employed working 39 hrs a week, mon-fri

Farm has 28 acres,and in the past up till 8-10 years ago, we used to buy cattle, keep them for the winter feeding, and sell them again, we cut 4-5 acres of silage and that done us. Then like others we started buying in March and selling to Factory mostly in Oct. which we have done up till oct 2009.

2010, dad wasnt able to be out, so i arraged for 14 acres to be cut for silage, the first cut we sold off the land, the second cut,(70) bales are up for sale but as thers plenty to go around and good weather, ther not selling. even at 20. actually no calls.

i have loads of questions, and i will be asking over the coming months, i notice there is a really good community of farmers on here, and is very active. I feel ill get good help.

a few points to note,
--land of 28 acres all together in the west of ireland, in 4-5 sections, of which id plan on fencing off again to make more sections that just 4-5, as i believe in padocks. . and strip grazing.
--14 of the 28 can be cut for silage, this is made up of different sections, as the land is hilly, good for cattle, but not for the machines. bit steep.
--shed on the land, not a slat shed, but can house 20 easily, can be fed indoors or out on the slab with 2 half round feeders. shed also houses turf, tractor, mowbar, fert shaker, muck spreader, trailer and tonnes of other crap.
--with the 14 acres cut the land looks and is very clean in these areas, but outside of this, i have 14 acres of long scutchie grass, the type that has grown over older grass, (2009 was the last time cattle has been framed) i see the new grass growing through at the moment, might be ok.
--boundry fence is good, needs a bit of attention, nothing id worry about, ill be getting the old electric up and running again.
--well on the land, so water is ticked.

Question

I need peoples view on what i should take on, ok, i know cattle are very dear at the moment. but that aside, i either let the place fall down around us, or farm it. Renting is not an option, neither i or dad or my wife wants this, to be honest, i have great interest in it, and my wife also, once we sort out the initial headaces.

1, With beef farming in mind, what are my options, and whats your best opinion?, what weights/type of cattle?
2, Scutchie, dead grass, what should i do?

my thinking is. buy 8-10 now, fence off sections for silage, sell the meadow grass, so i wont be stuck with bales again. let them graze the hills and outside of the 14 acres, perhaps not doing a second cut on part of the 14, and let them in to it.
But i dont know what to do, keep them for next winter or not. and what weights to buy now.
thinking on the long scutchie grass, leave it for a year and see what happens after cattle been on it. otherwise strim next winter.

would love your view though.



thats for taking the time to read,
NewBeefFarmer.

TUBBY

1, With beef farming in mind, what are my options, and whats your best opinion?, what weights/type of cattle?
2, Scutchie, dead grass, what should i do?

1.Options are few bullocks or heifers. doesnt sound like anything else would be viable for you. Stay well clear of bulls anyway. I reckon that your best bet would be to buy few bullocks round 450 - 500kg and kill in back end of year. If the land isnt able for heavy cattle, go with heifers round 350kg and kill back end. Dont be too fussy on type and if you not used to buying, let someone you know well and trust buy a few for ya til you start getting used to seeing value in cattle.
2.The only way to get rid of scutch is to mow it as it is stopping any good grass coming. this will leave you with poor quality pasture and you will have to meal cattle then. thats all money and summer grazing is a tight enough game anyway.
If you cant mow, let in a few sheep for a couple of weeks and they will eat it down or if not fenced for them, a few dry cows would do a job.

best of luck anyway but the only advice i would give you is dont spend too much on cattle the first year and find your feet.

NewBeefFarmer

I know theres more good heads on here

vanderbadger

sounds like a fairly decent setup for part time man, you have water and fairly decent bounds and tractor and the required machinery then you are half way there..
sure buy in a few cattle for the summer first and see how you go, if you gave the grazing ground a good run of a topper might clear away some of the strong stuff, if we got a good summer you could consider making hay, might be easier to sell off the field

Tipp Man

Cattle are mad dear at the moment so unless you have money getting enough stock could be a problem

You'd want to get that area that has got scutch grazed to the clay (especially if you can't mow/top it). Sheep would be best but dry cows would do a job. If you can't afford to buy dry cows you could approach a local dairy man and get him to clean it off for you

Long term if the land is decent personally i'd buy 15 cattle every spring weighing about 250-300kg and keep them over the summer, winter and following summer and kill them. So you'd have 30 cattle on hand 15 big and 15 small. Your only cutting round bales for 15 cattle and only have to feed 15 during the winter, which for a part timer is about 15 mins work every day. You don't have a big amount of slurry/dung to deal with etc.

No fertiliser except for the silage - try to get a clover sward going.

no meal either.

Its a low cost easy to manage system

NewBeefFarmer

Tippman

whats a clover sward?

Tipp Man

NewBeefFarmer wrote: »

Tippman

whats a clover sward?

Basically it means that there is a lot of clover in the field which dramatically reduces the need for artificial nitrogen to grow grass

NewBeefFarmer

Tipp Man wrote: »

Basically it means that there is a lot of clover in the field which dramatically reduces the need for artificial nitrogen to grow grass

Do you mean resting the land? When and where possible?

Tipp Man

NewBeefFarmer wrote: »

Do you mean resting the land? When and where possible?

No not at all. Basically along with the grass in a field you try to grow as much clover as possible.

you will need to sow clover for it to grow although it can come into a field naturally but never to the degree you want.

You can add clover to a grass field or if reseeding you can select a seed mix which has a lot of clover in it. Once the clover is established it will replace the need to continously put out bag nitrogen. In fact too much artifical nitrogen will kill or stop the clover establishing so once you set the clover you need to reduce the nitrogen

We have land that we haven't spread nitrogen on for 3 years and other land that hasn't had any for 5 years. The way cattle prices are in the factory you have to produce as cheap as possible, especially considering the price of bag fertiliser

Once you establish the clover sward you will be amazed at how much grass you can grow without the bag of N

Username John

Tipp Man wrote: »

We have land that we haven't spread nitrogen on for 3 years and other land that hasn't had any for 5 years.

Hi Tippman,

Interested by your comment above. Do you put out fertiliser early in the year? What about silage ground?

NewBeefFarmer - welcome to boards. Afraid I am of no help to you, as only have a few sheep myself, and know nothing of beef. On the clover issue - I am incorporating clover into all reseeds I do. I had to do this as it was a requirement of my REPS plan, I think it was at least 5kg/hectare. But am pleased with it so far.
However - not sure I would be recommending you to run out and start reseeding. Try to start with minimal expense, you'll find that the necessary expenses will be more than you thought anyways

Thanks

Bizzum

I've a couple of thoughts:
Talk to your father and ret his advice as to what would suit best. Likely no one knows better than himself! and its good to keep him onboard for several reasons.

The 14 acres that has not been farmed since 09 needs to get grazed. Land gets very out of control if not grazed.

The current price of cattle will leave it impossible to make profit in my opinion, but you cant graze yourself!

Would letting the land this year be a runner? But I can see from your post you want to farm it, if so you may bite the bullet and get some stock!

Tipp Man

Username John wrote: »

Hi Tippman,

Interested by your comment above. Do you put out fertiliser early in the year? What about silage ground?

NewBeefFarmer - welcome to boards. Afraid I am of no help to you, as only have a few sheep myself, and know nothing of beef. On the clover issue - I am incorporating clover into all reseeds I do. I had to do this as it was a requirement of my REPS plan, I think it was at least 5kg/hectare. But am pleased with it so far.
However - not sure I would be recommending you to run out and start reseeding. Try to start with minimal expense, you'll find that the necessary expenses will be more than you thought anyways

Thanks

Hey John, On the ground where the clover is properly established we don't put out any bag N. You can get away with putting it out early without affecting the clover too much. We are in a summer grazing beef system so no silage being cut - however we are changing back to wintering cattle so we will spread bag N for silage but it should be early enough not to stop the clover.

We are in the process of reseeding the beef farm so hopefully in a few years we won't spread any N at all for beef apart from silage

On the dairy farm we are out with the spreader every bloody day - its a costly business

ki

I used some bucket feed calves to help me get my cattle numbers up without a big outlay.

The quality might not be the greatest but at least you have something to sell.

I don't know what they are going for at the moment but you could pick them up off dealer rather than taking time off work to go through the marts.

Some people will totally disagree with this but it worked for me.

locky76

I started with 12 polly heifers froma dairy farmer neighbour.
you would buy these at the moment for around the €220 mark.
if there is a dairy farmer nearby with british freisians this might be the way to go, get in small and keep them over the winter, they should be fit to kill next august/september 2012.
Get calves which are bucket trained and buy directly off the farmer, that way you're not bringing in stressed animals opr disease picked up in the mart.
i rented out the grazing for half my place the first year or two to help me find my feet, didn't need as big numbers then.
start slowly, rome wasn't built in a day and best of luck;)
i PM'd you earlier today so feel free to give me a call if you need any more advice, i'm always anxious that people won't repeat my mistakes!!!

blue5000

I'd agree with Locky, with angus or whitehead heifer calves you are getting into stock fairly cheaply, you have options to sell in autumn, or keep them over the winter. Then this time next yr you could put some in calf to ai or fatten them for local butchers at about 18 months old.

You could sell some meadow this summer to help with cash flow. Cattle are expensive ok at the moment, cull cows could be an option, but you'd need to know what you're at buying them in marts. I presume you have herd no, crush and all that sorted?

Good luck and I hope it works out for you. Your old fella should be involved too, keep him interested in it.

NewBeefFarmer

great replies, many thanks,

I think im gunna look at a few 200-300 young bullocks, the quistion is, do i keep them over next winter.

this is something ill need to decide.

as im only starting out, id hope to only make a small loss, this is becuase some things just need updating. id really aim for a break even.

Ill have plenty of questions so keep an eye out for me, actually i have 2 post right now. go read.

thanks again,
newbeeffarmer.

Belongamick

Great to hear you have support at home from wife and dad ... makes a huge difference. Agree with all the posts and would like to add a point of view.
Perhaps take a look at buying a few heifers with a view to getting them in calf and letting the calves up to sell as beef.
Suppose this year you bought 5 heifers, get them in calf. They have 5 calves in spring next year - keep all 10 animals next winter 12 months. Repeat the following year. Now you have 5 decent cattle for market, 5 weanlings and 5 cows. Basically a conveyor of cattle coming through. When you have the help to keep an eye on cows calving etc. it may be an option. They cows would trim the rougher grass and you have sufficent ground for silage.
Bottom line - do not let the 39 job subsidise the farm and keep an eye on costs. You do have advantages of a decent set up to work from. Get advice from Teagasc or the department as to what grants you should be claiming. No disrespect to you dad but the paperwork involved in keeping you single farm payments, REPS (if applicable) etc can be daunting to the older generation. If you need somebody to buy cattle in Mayo - let me know.

AtillaTheHun

would you consider producing in calve heifers and heifers with calves a foot.
do a bit of AI instead of stock bull.
they always seem to make alot of money.

joey801

Tipp Man wrote: »

Long term if the land is decent personally i'd buy 15 cattle every spring weighing about 250-300kg and keep them over the summer, winter and following summer and kill them. So you'd have 30 cattle on hand 15 big and 15 small. Your only cutting round bales for 15 cattle and only have to feed 15 during the winter, which for a part timer is about 15 mins work every day. You don't have a big amount of slurry/dung to deal with etc.

No fertiliser except for the silage - try to get a clover sward going.

no meal either.

Its a low cost easy to manage system

Would there be much profit out of this once you're set up after first year? Just curious as I'm in a similar position as OP, probably lot less experience though.

Tipp Man

joey801 wrote: »

Would there be much profit out of this once you're set up after first year? Just curious as I'm in a similar position as OP, probably lot less experience though.

Not huge profits at all, in the 400-500 per head generally (but not on the price of cattle this spring). Remeber that it is 2 acres per head so 200-250 an acre and like i said i don't think that will be achieved on this years purchases unless the factory price of cattle increases

But there are benefits: Low costs, very low amount of work, not as much time spent in marts, not as much mart fees, factory fees, haulage fees. small amount of sheds and silage needed (half the actual stock that is on the farm), Threat of TB not really a problem as bullocks sold to factory

would really suit a part timer in my opinion

The important thing is to find a system that suit you, your land and your bank balance. Whats good for the goose isn't always good for the gander

Kovu

Willfarman, I don't want to hear about this sort of thing at 1.50am.

I can name two people near me that also fall into the same category as what you're basing this assumption on. And how many others could fit into that if you take in the rest of the western counties.
That's all it is, an assumption!

Don't reply to this on thread please, PM me if you have an issue with it.

.Kovu.