suckling v dairying

feckin day gone again!!

How come suckling men reckon they dont make money? Whats d ball park profit on a 35 cow suckler herd? Friend of mine reckons he barely breaks even? Y do ye bother if theres nothing out of it?

mantua

Wells its not as easy as a normal office job were ya can hand in your 2 weeks notice and up shop to another job. It can depend some years can be better and some years can be worse. Some farmers might have alot invested in their farm and more importantly farmings in their blood so why leave it if your still making a living?? different if your not making any bit of profit.

blue5000

feckin day gone again!! wrote: »

How come suckling men reckon they dont make money? Whats d ball park profit on a 35 cow suckler herd? Friend of mine reckons he barely breaks even? Y do ye bother if theres nothing out of it?

Approx 85 x 17 = 1395e for 2010, we are eternal optimists!

teagasc reckoned the top 1/3 of suckler farmers made 83e/ ha, before subs/reps etc. I'm allowing 2 cows to the ha, so thats a ballpark figure. Some days I reckon I'd be better off with the whole place planted with sitka and be working for somebody else, but would I be happy?

fatoftheland

an average breakeven figure to use is it costs 600 to produce a weanling for sale! if you get 900 this year average,its not hard to see its very poor profit as 35 cows means your lucky if you sell 28 weanlings every 12 months.

pakalasa

There is very little if any money in it. That's why it's important to have an off-farm job and the farm set-up to run hassle free. €600, thought the figure was around €500, plus you will be doing well to have an average of €900 for spring born weanlings sold in the autumn.

polod

pakalasa wrote: »

There is very little if any money in it. That's why it's important to have an off-farm job and the farm set-up to run hassle free. €600, thought the figure was around €500, plus you will be doing well to have an average of €900 for spring born weanlings sold in the autumn.

Thats it, without the off farm job there would be very few suckler farmers around....and the ones that don't have an off farm job are probably on farm assist to keep them going (apart from the big producers id imagine).....

The lack of cash flow is a serious problem for sucker farmers.
Some might only get paid once a year when they sell their weanlings :eek:
You would want to be good at budgeting

Dunedin

fatoftheland wrote: »

an average breakeven figure to use is it costs 600 to produce a weanling for sale! if you get 900 this year average,its not hard to see its very poor profit as 35 cows means your lucky if you sell 28 weanlings every 12 months.

it never ceases to amaze me how this figure is always banded about in regard to cost of suckler cow. how much of this 600e woudl be fixed costs. I operate a spring calving suckler calf to beef system and it actually costs less to keep a cow than a bullock as prob about 10euro a year on nuts for cows - basically a very small amount after calving and thats it whereas, I might give my bullocks 10lb a day to finish them.

Cows get all the poorer quality silage - top of pit, older, poorer quality bales whilst all other cattle get the best of the silage.

Fixed costs include insurance, fencing, depreciation, labour, machinery costs, so regardless of what system you are in, you are liable for these but we only ever seem to associate same to cows.

funny man

Dunedin wrote: »

it never ceases to amaze me how this figure is always banded about in regard to cost of suckler cow. how much of this 600e woudl be fixed costs. I operate a spring calving suckler calf to beef system and it actually costs less to keep a cow than a bullock as prob about 10euro a year on nuts for cows - basically a very small amount after calving and thats it whereas, I might give my bullocks 10lb a day to finish them.

Cows get all the poorer quality silage - top of pit, older, poorer quality bales whilst all other cattle get the best of the silage.

Fixed costs include insurance, fencing, depreciation, labour, machinery costs, so regardless of what system you are in, you are liable for these but we only ever seem to associate same to cows.

The cost i always heard was €500 but that's an average, if you had all rented ground or put a cost on your land (land charge) it would be higher or indeed some dairy guys would be red faced also. Some good operators out there getting good returns per cow but per acre it's whoeful so a figure is an average and tells you nothing about a farms overall profitability. you state your cows only get poorer type silage but surely this costs the same to make as good quality stuff, the difference between bullocks and sucklers is the amount of feed required to keep a cow, the bull/AI costs and the VET, against the percentage of live calves sold less the number of replacements to keep for the herd, against bullocks you buy at a price sell at a price and take off the animal losses feed and vet. the big benifit in having your own is like now when we are in a bubble and the beef guy has to buy not knowing when it's going to bust.

on the DairyVSucklers on average herd sizes;

Dairy Lots of work with about average industry wage.
Sucklers some work with some money.