calves or weanlings

Looney1

Was having a discussion with a man at the mart the other day on the merits of calf to beef or weanling to beef. My opinion was that buying calves was not worth the hassle( or the milk replacer) and that you would do just as well buying weanlings. He disagreed saying that getting calves cheap in february was the way to go. Any ideas??

Bass Reeves

If you are good to calves and have the set up it as good as any method. However it depends on where you are based as well. If you are in a dairy/tillage you have access to straw and calves cheaper than other parts of the country. However if you are in a suckler area however and can spend time in the mart you may be able to buy suckler runner's at value TBH there is no right or wrong way it's what suits.

To buy calves you will spend less time buying than buying weanling especially in a year where prices are strong

_Brian

In a good year calves can leave as much behind as other systems. In bad years I think they loose less.

I think most lads can rear calves it’s just many aren’t ready for the attention to detail it takes before weaning.

You hear talk of it being time consuming, I never see that, a good setup and you’d feed an awful lot of calves in 15 minutes.

I like rearing calves, my earliest memories farming is mixing milk with my granny and feeding calves in pens.

_Brian

There is of course nothing to stop you doing a bit of both.
Rearing calves on and then buying runners to match them.

As ofthen in life it may not be a case of “either or” but more think flexible.

Anto_Meath

It probably depends on where you are located but personally I think there is a small bit more profit in the calf to beef system than the weanling to beef system. Reason been the calf to beef is a dairy cross bred calf so cost somewhere around €200 to buy, another €200 will cover your expenses such as bag and a half of milk, meal, water, vet bills, but yes there is a good bit of time involved with it. However in the marts in the back end of the year it hard to pick up weanlings that match what you have reared at €400 (around me any way), so you are buying a better quality weanlin that is suckler bred so you have more money invested as one of these weanlings is probably costing somewhere in the region of €600 - €700 euro and when killed will probably only gross the €200 more than the calf reared.

blue5000

If you already have some calves born on your farm you would be better off buying weanlngs. Nothing worse than buying in some bug that destroys your own calves.

patsy_mccabe

The huge difference I see between calf health of both types is whether the calf got proper beastings or not. Hard to know with bought in calves.
I've seen it here with the sucklers, any sick calves I've had, have always been able to fight off any bad scours because of the quality of the beastings. Ive never lost a calf here, if it survives the first day. Did loads of stomach tubing this year, but all pulled through.
Bad memories here when we lost a lot of calves years ago rearing them on the bucket.

_Brian

patsy_mccabe wrote: »

The huge difference I see between calf health of both types is whether the calf got proper beastings or not. Hard to know with bought in calves.
I've seen it here with the sucklers, any sick calves I've had, have always been able to fight off any bad scours because of the quality of the beastings. Ive never lost a calf here, if it survives the first day. Did loads of stomach tubing this year, but all pulled through.
Bad memories here when we lost a lot of calves years ago rearing them on the bucket.

It’s a big thing ok.

Downtown123

Runners can be bought in august or september fairly cheaply You'd get very good friesians for 250 ish or beef breeds for 50 more. Very good value imo. stocked at 5/ha (2/acre) on a kilo of meal and aftergrass they'd fly it relatively cheaply.