Heifers to beef

Muckit

Can we get a similar discussion going about heifers to beef as with the bull beef tread.

So are there any lads buying weanling heifers and taking them to beef? If so, what is your strategy? What weight/breed/time of purchase etc to you work?

Would it be a more workable grass based system than bull beef for a lad instead of suckling?

reilig

Muckit wrote: »

Can we get a similar discussion going about heifers to beef as with the bull beef tread.

So are there any lads buying weanling heifers and taking them to beef? If so, what is your strategy? What weight/breed/time of purchase etc to you work?

Would it be a more workable grass based system than bull beef for a lad instead of suckling?

Don't have any figures for you Muckit, but beware of 2 pitfalls with heifers:

1. They may be in calf when you buy them as weinlings.
2. they come in heat and will cross ditches or bulls will travel to them.

God be with the days when all you had was a simple ould bullock

JohnBoy

Would it derail the thread completely to discuss the merits of the once calved heifers? they seem to have fallen off Justin's radar, but seemed like a good idea to me.


I like the idea of putting everything to the bull/ai and then slaughtering anything that didnt work out.

Heifer doesnt go in calf? factory.

Heifer has difficult calving? factory.

Heifer produces runt calf? factory.


Seemed like a good way to start a suckler herd to me, but what's the catch?

Tipp Man

couple of problems that Relig has highlighted

However heifers are a better system than bullocks as you can get them finished so much quicker - they should be finished at 18 months so no need for the second winter.

You could buy AA heifer calves for say 250 EUR and they'd be nearly half reared for that cost, 250 EUR costs should take them through to 18 months/finishing (remember you are wintering a small animal)

Your sale then would be a 500kg+ heifer killing out roughly 270kg. Say a selling price of 3.50 a KG then you have sales of 940 roughly.

So your profit would be roughly 940 minus 500 = 440. You should hold 1 calf and 1 heifer on an acre

bob charles

reilig wrote: »

Don't have any figures for you Muckit, but beware of 2 pitfalls with heifers:

1. They may be in calf when you buy them as weinlings.
2. they come in heat and will cross ditches or bulls will travel to them.

God be with the days when all you had was a simple ould bullock

Couldnt have said it better myself. We seem to have a revolving suckling herd from heifers turning up in calf, totaling about 2 - 3% of maiden heifers bought. not fun sometimes calving.

flatout11

JohnBoy wrote: »

Would it derail the thread completely to discuss the merits of the once calved heifers? they seem to have fallen off Justin's radar, but seemed like a good idea to me.


I like the idea of putting everything to the bull/ai and then slaughtering anything that didnt work out.

Heifer doesnt go in calf? factory.

Heifer has difficult calving? factory.

Heifer produces runt calf? factory.


Seemed like a good way to start a suckler herd to me, but what's the catch?

it was one way for the factory to ensure a supply of cheap beef
the sums dont add up + the extra hassle no thanks
there was a semi decent follow up article in the journal from some of the lads in grange outlining the costs of the system

flatout11

bob charles wrote: »

Couldnt have said it better myself. We seem to have a revolving suckling herd from heifers turning up in calf, totaling about 2 - 3% of maiden heifers bought. not fun sometimes calving.

the joys of agey bull weanlings!!!!!!!!!!

bbam

Tipp Man wrote: »

couple of problems that Relig has highlighted

However heifers are a better system than bullocks as you can get them finished so much quicker - they should be finished at 18 months so no need for the second winter.

You could buy AA heifer calves for say 250 EUR and they'd be nearly half reared for that cost, 250 EUR costs should take them through to 18 months/finishing (remember you are wintering a small animal)

Your sale then would be a 500kg+ heifer killing out roughly 270kg. Say a selling price of 3.50 a KG then you have sales of 940 roughly.

So your profit would be roughly 940 minus 500 = 440. You should hold 1 calf and 1 heifer on an acre

Not sure about the numbers there tipp man..

You'll not buy good calves at €250, and if you do they'll not be half reared.. this year has been crazy for calf prices and I don't see any reason for it to change...

The €250 to bring her to 500KG at 18 months ??

Tipp Man

bbam wrote: »

Not sure about the numbers there tipp man..

You'll not buy good calves at €250, and if you do they'll not be half reared.. this year has been crazy for calf prices and I don't see any reason for it to change...

The €250 to bring her to 500KG at 18 months ??

Well maybe not half reared but you should pick up good AA heifers for €250 - certainly strong 3 week old calves

Regarding the costs - you stop feeding the calves meal in April or start of May when they are settled at grass and not too much meal at the back end and in the winter. Remember you are only wintering a small animal - they would eat very little in silage as they would be kept out late in autumn and should leave the shed at the earliest possible opportunity - around paddy's day or before. No meal then - save for some of the lighter ones which you could feed for 6 weeks in September to get them ready. If your calves were decent this shouldn't be necessary

bob charles

Tipp Man wrote: »

Well maybe not half reared but you should pick up good AA heifers for €250 - certainly strong 3 week old calves

Regarding the costs - you stop feeding the calves meal in April or start of May when they are settled at grass and not too much meal at the back end and in the winter. Remember you are only wintering a small animal - they would eat very little in silage as they would be kept out late in autumn and should leave the shed at the earliest possible opportunity - around paddy's day or before. No meal then - save for some of the lighter ones which you could feed for 6 weeks in September to get them ready. If your calves were decent this shouldn't be necessary

hold on, but there would be a land rental cost (or opportunity cost if owned) of €150 per head before, fert, reseeding etc? if we take an earlier figure of a calf and a year and a half would need an acre a year then multiply this by 2. I know its costing me over €20 on diesel per animal finished (haulage x2,farm tractor for feeding and light field work ), which is very frightening and this doesnt even take into account all of the fuel a contractor uses aswell. I really dont think allot of guys have a clue about costs

Tipp Man

bob charles wrote: »

hold on, but there would be a land rental cost (or opportunity cost if owned) of €150 per head before, fert, reseeding etc? if we take an earlier figure of a calf and a year and a half would need an acre a year then multiply this by 2. I know its costing me over €20 on diesel per animal finished (haulage x2,farm tractor for feeding and light field work ), which is very frightening and this doesnt even take into account all of the fuel a contractor uses aswell. I really dont think allot of guys have a clue about costs

The opportunity cost is there in every system and its not just the land opportunity cost but your own times cost as well - i assumed from the original post that he wants to farm the land so as long as your profit from working the land is higher than the opportunity cost of renting it out then he should be ok

Reseeding costs would be 300 an acre, and assuming an annual reseeding rate of 5% that is 15 EUR per acre over the whole farm or per finished heifer

Regarding the costs diesal is certainly a high cost which is going to get higher but i have assumed that in my costs (I was thinking 15 per animal and not 20)

bbam

We keep relatively detailed records of costs and have been rearing calves for quite a few years.. I'd reckon that to bring a month old calf to 15 months will cost you about €375. And we usually get them to about 350-380kg

Tipp Man

bbam wrote: »

We keep relatively detailed records of costs and have been rearing calves for quite a few years.. I'd reckon that to bring a month old calf to 15 months will cost you about €375. And we usually get them to about 350-380kg

Are you including land rental in that?

How much nuts are you giving them?

bbam

Tipp Man wrote: »

Are you including land rental in that?

How much nuts are you giving them?

No land rental and we keep meal to about 1kg a day throughout..

Nutcase

Tipp Man wrote: »

couple of problems that Relig has highlighted

However heifers are a better system than bullocks as you can get them finished so much quicker - they should be finished at 18 months so no need for the second winter.

You could buy AA heifer calves for say 250 EUR and they'd be nearly half reared for that cost, 250 EUR costs should take them through to 18 months/finishing (remember you are wintering a small animal)

Your sale then would be a 500kg+ heifer killing out roughly 270kg. Say a selling price of 3.50 a KG then you have sales of 940 roughly.

So your profit would be roughly 940 minus 500 = 440. You should hold 1 calf and 1 heifer on an acre

€250 to take a heifer calf through to slaughter at 18months does seem relatively cheap. I always reckoned it costed 120-150€ to winter a weanling from mid nov-april. Thats jst silage, meal and medicine expenses.
Not ditiching the system of finishing heifers I think its one way we can make good use of our grass. Still takes a good shot of meal to push them on into good weights aswell imo!

pakalasa

Everyone seems to be knocking the feeding of meal. Feeding some meal at grass especially in autumn is a great way to finish cattle earlier. Avoids that second and even third winter.

Muckit

The reason I started this tread is because changing system. Majority of the cows are going. They're not suiting me at the moment for a number of reasons.

I know buying in will probably bring up it's own problems, but I'm willing to give it a go. Wanting to stick with a mainly grass system, I'm going to buy in a light heifers (~250kg). As said should cost very little to winter them and have things set up to get them out to grass asap next spring. What have I got to lose? Don't hold back!

bbam

Muckit wrote: »

The reason I started this tread is because changing system. Majority of the cows are going. They're not suiting me at the moment for a number of reasons.

I know buying in will probably bring up it's own problems, but I'm willing to give it a go. Wanting to stick with a mainly grass system, I'm going to buy in a light heifers (~250kg). As said should cost very little to winter them and have things set up to get them out to grass asap next spring. What have I got to lose? Don't hold back!

We were in the position over the last few years where the cows just had to go.. Painful as it was I'm glad we did it..
Don't be afraid to try something different....
We built up to it over a few years but there came the time when the cows were loaded and gone..

blue5000

Lads if we all go chasing grass there is going to be a horrendous glut of beef next oct-nov. I think the once calved heifer system is worth looking at again, mainly because calves are so dear. I know, I know you are all going to say it plays right into the factories hands.

reilig

bob charles wrote: »

Couldnt have said it better myself. We seem to have a revolving suckling herd from heifers turning up in calf, totaling about 2 - 3% of maiden heifers bought. not fun sometimes calving.

I won't lie. I sold one last year that was in calf and had to pay compensation after she had a section and the calf died and take the heifer back. Sold her 2 weeks ago after fattening her for the summer and made a small bit on her which was sheer luck.

Anyway, the guy that bought her from me originally filled his shed with 120 heifers last September and october. He had 16 of them in-calf.

Imagine the hardship.

Kept my bull and heifer weinlings seperated this year.

reilig

pakalasa wrote: »

Everyone seems to be knocking the feeding of meal. Feeding some meal at grass especially in autumn is a great way to finish cattle earlier. Avoids that second and even third winter.

I totally agree. And people seem to think that we feed ad-lib. Which is definitely not the case. A small suppliment of meal can go a long way. I find that money spent on meal is returned Eur2 for Eur1 at sale time with increased sale price and a faster finished animal.

reilig

bob charles wrote: »

I really dont think allot of guys have a clue about costs

Nail on the head.

People think that because they own the land, it costs them nothing or because they own a mchine that the only cost in tax, insurance and diesel. Vet fees, vaccination and dosing fees and testing fees are big too and the longer you keep animals in your system, the higher these will be.

In some cases it would be cheaper to keep no cattle at all and send half the SFP cheque to Larry Goodman so that he can have an excuse to build an extension to the vault. At least they'd have half the sfp as profit.

Muckit

reilig wrote: »

I won't lie. I sold one last year that was in calf and had to pay compensation after she had a section and the calf died and take the heifer back. Sold her 2 weeks ago after fattening her for the summer and made a small bit on her which was sheer luck.

Anyway, the guy that bought her from me originally filled his shed with 120 heifers last September and october. He had 16 of them in-calf.

Imagine the hardship.

Kept my bull and heifer weinlings seperated this year.

It's to avoid this and to have a small initial outlay that I'm opting to buy smaller heifer weanlings.

reilig

Muckit wrote: »

It's to avoid this and to have a small initial outlay that I'm opting to buy smaller heifer weanlings.

The injection to knock out the calf is a good investment at EUR8 per head!!

Muckit

reilig wrote: »

The injection to knock out the calf is a good investment at EUR8 per head!!

Again, I'd like to avoid this situation! Unnatural (prevention better than cure)

leg wax

reilig wrote: »

The injection to knock out the calf is a good investment at EUR8 per head!!

why not scan them for 3 euro and send back to owner if in calf.

moy83

Muckit wrote: »

Again, I'd like to avoid this situation! Unnatural (prevention better than cure)

How far in calf can you send them to the factory at , or can you at all ?

JohnBoy

flatout11 wrote: »

it was one way for the factory to ensure a supply of cheap beef
the sums dont add up + the extra hassle no thanks
there was a semi decent follow up article in the journal from some of the lads in grange outlining the costs of the system

blue5000 wrote: »

Lads if we all go chasing grass there is going to be a horrendous glut of beef next oct-nov. I think the once calved heifer system is worth looking at again, mainly because calves are so dear. I know, I know you are all going to say it plays right into the factories hands.

Honest question......

How does the once calved heifer help the factory? I thought the whole point was you'd get heifer prices as opposed to cow prices for the heifers?

like I asked, what's the catch? (apart from the obvious factor of having to deal with a bunch of heifers?)

pakalasa

I was talking to a guy there recently who scans cows / heifers in the local mart. You can sell them then as guaranteed not in-calf. Avoids a lot of hassle, by the sounds of it. Maybe it should become standard practice.

Rovi

pakalasa wrote: »

I was talking to a guy there recently who scans cows / heifers in the local mart. You can sell them then as guaranteed not in-calf. Avoids a lot of hassle, by the sounds of it. Maybe it should become standard practice.

I've had to take back over the years a couple of weanling heifers who proved in-calf after they'd been in their new home for a while. Going by their subsequent calving dates, they most likely got bulled at the mart or very shortly after arrival at their destination, but there was no way of knowing that at the time. No amount of scanning on day of sale will catch those ones.
They got into decent cows afterwards, so it wasn't entirely a dead loss.
We were always very careful to keep the bull and heifer calves separate as they got older/stronger, but we couldn't of course absolutely guarantee that accidents didn't happen.

ellewood

JohnBoy wrote: »

Would it derail the thread completely to discuss the merits of the once calved heifers? they seem to have fallen off Justin's radar, but seemed like a good idea to me.


I like the idea of putting everything to the bull/ai and then slaughtering anything that didnt work out.

Heifer doesnt go in calf? factory.

Heifer has difficult calving? factory.

Heifer produces runt calf? factory.


Seemed like a good way to start a suckler herd to me, but what's the catch?

any one have a link to any info on it in grange or any where else, cant find anything on grange website.

flatout11

JohnBoy wrote: »

Honest question......

How does the once calved heifer help the factory? I thought the whole point was you'd get heifer prices as opposed to cow prices for the heifers?

like I asked, what's the catch? (apart from the obvious factor of having to deal with a bunch of heifers?)

its keeping more animals in the system
their calves are also likely to stay in the system (beef in 2 yrs) as opposed to being exported. given the fact that the heifers are older the carcass wt will be that bit heavier and your prob gonna be selling them at the low end of the market
also extra hassle
extra calf mortality (on average Cdiff etc)
poorer quality calves (relitave to cows)
reduced efficiency - as opposed to a younger maiden heifer

blue5000

ellewood wrote: »

any one have a link to any info on it in grange or any where else, cant find anything on grange website.

http://www.jstor.org/pss/25556283

Found this one and if you type( once calved heifer scheme ) into google a fair bit pops up.

A lot of the work was done about 20 yrs ago and the guys who did the research like Mike Drennan and George Keane are retired now.

bob charles

blue5000 wrote: »

the guys who did the research like Mike Drennan and George Keane are retired now.

George Keane was a man always worth a listen, is knowledge is missed

ellewood

thanks for that blue.

blue5000

bob charles wrote: »

George Keane was a man always worth a listen, is knowledge is missed

I presume G Keane who did the OCH work in the article is the same George Keane that was over the maize in UCD, I could be wrong though. George in UCD wasn't afraid to call a spade a spade.;)

Basil Lowman who worked in Scotland, is another name worth looking up on the OCH stuff.

Another of those articles
http://pubs.aic.ca/doi/abs/10.4141/cjas93-093
was about using a charalois bull on heifers and it concluded that OCH system was no better economically than just taking heifers to slaughter, this work was done in Canada. OK we know now that using a charolais bull on heifers is nuts. I think we need to read these articles carefully before we jump to any conclusions.

johnpawl

reilig wrote: »

I won't lie. I sold one last year that was in calf and had to pay compensation after she had a section and the calf died and take the heifer back. Sold her 2 weeks ago after fattening her for the summer and made a small bit on her which was sheer luck.

Anyway, the guy that bought her from me originally filled his shed with 120 heifers last September and october. He had 16 of them in-calf.

Imagine the hardship.

Kept my bull and heifer weinlings seperated this year.

Just an aside there, at what age do you think its getting risky having heifer and bull calves together?

reilig

johnpawl wrote: »

Just an aside there, at what age do you think its getting risky having heifer and bull calves together?

The heifer was 7 months when she was bulled. I kept them apart this year from 5 months onwards.

blue5000

I reckon 6 mths for early maturing breed angus x. We calve in March and split them at end Sept, so far so good.