What caused the cattle price bubble in Ireland last year?

lalababa

Was it the American drought? The rise of inputs? The lack of off farm employment? A slight decrease in cattle no.s over the preceeding years?Coveney making silly statements about min. stocking levels? Outside forces or inside forces? Both?....All?

There was ,I think a slight increase in British prices, but nothing like Irish increases. Esp. in younger animals and esp. calves:rolleyes:

Now prices are back a fair bit from last year, but imputs are the same or more! And with the price and scarcity of fodder will prices decrease another bit in the next months before they go out to grass?

The dairy people seem to be all trying to upscale and the calf no.s are up 30% from same time last year (some increase attributed to earlier calfing). What are we going to do with all these calves esp. the friesian bulls? They seem to be making poor prices at moment. How much worse are these bullocks at kill out compared to contenentals, do they taste funny....better than horsemeat?:p

ootbitb

I'm a conspiracy junkie and put it down to the factories broadcasting the seeds of the golden goose to get breeders to put heifers in calf to fuel their gravy train for another ten years of subsistence prices.

reilig

lalababa wrote: »

Was it the American drought? The rise of inputs? The lack of off farm employment? A slight decrease in cattle no.s over the preceeding years?Coveney making silly statements about min. stocking levels? Outside forces or inside forces? Both?....All?

There was ,I think a slight increase in British prices, but nothing like Irish increases. Esp. in younger animals and esp. calves:rolleyes:

Now prices are back a fair bit from last year, but imputs are the same or more! And with the price and scarcity of fodder will prices decrease another bit in the next months before they go out to grass?

The dairy people seem to be all trying to upscale and the calf no.s are up 30% from same time last year (some increase attributed to earlier calfing). What are we going to do with all these calves esp. the friesian bulls? They seem to be making poor prices at moment. How much worse are these bullocks at kill out compared to contenentals, do they taste funny....better than horsemeat?:p

I think it was a combination of all of those factors combined with one of the highest levels of live export of animals on record. There was also a world wide price rise in beef.

In relation to the comparison between british and Irish price rises - there was less of a british price rise because they were already getting more per kg for beef than we were. Our prices just rose to slightly below their beef prices.

maxxuumman

Some of the calf prices were driven by dairy farmers holding calves due to quota situation. Some dairy farmers were even going out buying calves to drink milk. Last spring we were on the back of two good years, re weather. There was plenty of good quality fodder and fields were full of grass this time last year, and the sun was shining.

Farmer Pudsey

The bubble was mostly caused by a shortage of 2009 and 2010 cattle this ment that factory prices were very high in late 2011 and early 2012. Some dairy farmers that normally sold calves held on to them as the saw the high prices that yearlings were making in the spring 2012. The previous year we had a fairly good grass growth and cattle thrive a dry autaum which with the lack of cattle ment that from August 2011 on cattle prices continued to rise right through the winter leaving a good margin.

Farmers that usually bought 2YO bullocks found them in short supply and the same with farmers that bought yearlings found themselves competing with finishers for cattle.A good spring also exasperated the demand providing a perfect setup for some farmers to expect that an upward spiral would continue.

A lot of farmers failed to take increasing costs into account. Realism is now begining come into the buisness as newer farmers see that the margin is quite small.