Spring 2020..... 1.5m Dairy calves.... discuss.

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119083179#Comment_119083179

around what weight did they kill out.

Base price

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119083304#Comment_119083304

386.

Jjameson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119083402#Comment_119083402

They were great stock and a top quality end product produced. He be grossing over €1900 a head with low inputs..

paddysdream

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119081437#Comment_119081437

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119080522#Comment_119080522

I wonder at times .

Lads calling to the yard after work ? Do you expect them to take time off from their job to look at your calves as you don't seem prepared to give them a few minutes from your job to show them the calves .If you want to sell them be prepared to at least make an effort .Not like they are scarce at the present time .

Of course people are going to look for a decent calf ie a "square " one .Hardly just going to load up any old dirt and give the asking price now are they ?

Not paying/taking them when agreed is only messing I agree .

straight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119083511#Comment_119083511

Anybody with any shred of common sense will not call to a dairy farmer at milking time. I expect them to call at an arranged time, do their business in a professional manner and leave. Too much to ask usually so I don't bother with them. As far as I can see lads buying beef calves don't have a clue in general. I sell heifer calves every year and the guys I deal with are a pleasure.

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119083593#Comment_119083593

I am just wondering what the difference between them is. Is it more heifer calf buyer's are full time farmers.

The only case I would make is that a lot of lads working have very little spare time. They will have 10-11 hours every day tied up with there full time job. When I was working full time I generally wanted to call to buy stock when I was on the way ho.e from work. It's was was much easier to do it then rather than trying to get back out to do it later. You could say that anyone with a shred of commonsense would understand that a part time farmer needs to call to buy that calf or anything else on the way home from work.

Saturday was the only days you had to organise stuff so you did not want to spend 2-3 hours that day buying calves.

Now I would always ring and arrange a time before hand but that was the time window I was under.

Unfortunately it's the nature of the business. I think dairy farmers are in a quandary. You have to look at Teagasc's admission that they never looked at the calf issue when looking at dairy expansion. There general advice at the time was use an easy calving bull and sell the calf as young and as early as possible.

Add in that we now have 50k extra calves coming on stream every year and you see the pressure it adds to the system. Add in as well that the ferry companies to the UK will not allow calves to travel on there ships and that the French route is under pressure. It amazes me that routine ship maintenance always seems to happen in March which puts pressure on calf export.

We then have the proposed calf welfare/transport rules that will probably come in to force in spring 2024. This is going to get worse before it gets better from a dairy farmers point of view.

I will make one comment and it's not directed at you Straight. It was a comment passed by a lads that installes water pipe. He stated that a lot of them seem to consider that there time was more precious than anybody else's. They often fail to understand that it's the same for a lit of other people.

Say my name

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119082905#Comment_119082905

I was helping out a relation with shearing on Monday. The talk moved to "the fifth quarter". Absolutely nothing is wasted it's shipped or flown out of the western world. The fifth quarter pays for the staffs wages in the boning hall.

Anyone here would turn their nose up at a sheep's head. But in the middle and far east it's dinner.

Say my name

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119082774#Comment_119082774

So if a calf is 29 days old they can travel over 50km?

Gillespy

Such contempt for dairy farmers out there. No, you do not go into a farmyard unannounced and expect then to drop tools and entertain you. Such entitlement.

I agree some of them are ignorant chancers that haven't a clue. Yeah pal, I'll breed so I need to use the calving jack all the time so you can give me another €25. Mart everything now.

patsy_mccabe

Dairy beef breeding - the hotly disputed Donbass region between beef and dairy farmers.

Siamsa Sessions

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119083749#Comment_119083749

I work off-farm in ICT research and spoke to a few research guys in a meat processor a few months back. We were trying to see where ICT and data analysis might help them reduce waste, increase efficiency, etc. If we could scope out some work, then we would go after research funding somewhere.

But they couldn't see where any more waste could be removed from their system. Absolutely everything from the animal is used. They reckoned maybe 1-2% was wasted at most.

kevthegaff

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119083179#Comment_119083179

What sort of money did the come into?

DBK1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119083787#Comment_119083787

It could be argued in the other direction that there’s such contempt for beef farmers from the dairy farmer?

Most dairy men are looking for R grade prices for P grade stock when it comes to calves and seem to think that even though it doesn’t pay them to rear the calves the beef man should pay a premium for being afforded the luxury of rearing the calf instead. If it doesn’t pay the dairy man to do it how the hell does he think it’ll pay the beef man to do it when the beef man has to pay for the calf first?

I have no issue with any dairy farmer making the decision to breed smaller calves to reduce his use of the Jack, reduce his workload, reduce the stress on the cows, and whatever other benefits that brings. On paper it’s absolutely a good decision for a dairy farm. But don’t then be expecting to get big prices for these runts of calves. As I said in an earlier post here, if that’s the decision that’s made then the poor calf price will have to be viewed as a business expense and so be it, if the calf loses money the cow will have to make up the difference.

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119083753#Comment_119083753

The legislation is not in place yet. There is talk.about unweaned calves not allow to travel over 100 km(I taught it was) with out a rest period.

The legislation is expected next year and it is unlikely to be enforced before 2024. However the last thing dairy farmers want next spring is a film of some lads throwing 3-4 day old calves into a lor or them being thrown off lorry for to be slaughters either.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119083787#Comment_119083787

No there is not. I pointed out that I always ring and tell them what time I would call at if it was not suitable he say it and I look for another place to call to. I spend enough time in lads yards waiting for them as well.

Most lads here doing drystock are working on a small margin. Even a couple of years ago dairy farmers were telling us 80-90c/ day was enough to rear there heifers from 8-12 weeks until there were 2-3 weeks from calving. How dare we think that we needed 1.4/ day.

We have had dairy farmer on this forum complaining about the price of labour. One lad was expecting his worker to be there for a ten hour day, insisting he take 30 minutes morning and afternoon for tea breaks and an hour for lunch. This meant he was onsite from 8-6 do he could clean the milk parlour after milking in the morning and bring the cows in for evening milking and complete part of one of the milkings.

6-8 years ago we had dairy farmers registering there black JE crosses as AA and LM, registering them at 5-7 days old and then selling them at the mart as a 12-16 day old calf which looked like an AA or LM of that age.

It's was not beef farmers that created the present mess. Dairy farmers offloading calves at present that are registered at 3-4 days old at birth and then thrown into the mart at a week old.

When a lot of dairy farmers decided to exit the beef side of there business they taught that the white gold ment everything. Some going to 200+ cows without factoring in labour costs whether to milk the extra cows or feed the calves.

Not putting up housing deciding that outside cubicles were the preferred expansion method and an acre or more of a lagoon.

As Dillon admitted they never factored in the calf. The FJ selling the idea of the mystical eastern European couple. We had a lad in here justifying it explaining that as accommodation was required in a 4 bed bungalow he could charge them 6-800/ month for rent. It was mainly to get over the 50 hour working week and 11 hour breaks between shifts. The wife could go and work somewhere else even though she was technically working on the farm

Compact calving was the order of the day. No taught as to what would happen when 150kish calves hit the market for a 3-6 week period during the spring. They forgot about the stainless steel as well

There was s several ways to look at things. Many looks at their own business only

straight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119084344#Comment_119084344

The dairy heroes you are talking about are not the guys worried about the value of their calf. It's it average family dairy farm that wants money for their well cared for stock. The big dairy heroes are harming us all. And they are the guys that want to bulldoze everybody else.

Gillespy

Quite the essay but I just read in the previous page what those extensively raised whiteheads brought. We all see what these poor calves make in the marts as yearlings. From here it's hard to make sense of it.

jaymla627

https://www.fwi.co.uk/livestock/dairy/are-arla-producers-ready-for-new-rules-on-calves

you'll see the above sooner our later as part of keeping your bord bia quality insurance, will cut out all the messing

DBK1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119084382#Comment_119084382

You’re leaving out the most important part, those extensively raised whiteheads killed out as R grades at 26 months old. Any dairy animal killing that weight and grade at that age without meal had to have been a good quality calf in the first place, id imagine they were exactly the type of calves a beef man is looking for and will pay a good price for, not the poorly crossed Angus/jersey/Holstein that a lot of dairy men want big money for.

Base price

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119083753#Comment_119083753

Basically yes as it allows the continued export of dairy bull calves from Ireland without it beef farming here was fooked.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20220114IPR21025/animals-must-be-better-protected-during-transport

Base price

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119083903#Comment_119083903

I only saw the kill sheet on his phone as they hadn't been priced at that stage but he was getting a base of €5/kg plus whatever bonuses.

Bass Reeves

He would have averaged 5.2 ish per Kg depending on how far over the 5/ kg the base. If they average 386kgs he would have netted over 2000 on average after deductions.

It was super weight for HE/ AA cattle at that age. Most will not even average 50 kgs DW off that. He is obiviously some lad to pick out calves as they must have top class generics. It's not all down to extensive grazing.

If he is extensive grazing he is running than at a unit to over 1.5 acres. It's some performance with no ration. On a 40 acre farm he would have 20-25 to sell. His costs are probably 6-700 to finish but he will not have numbers. Assuming he paid 300/ head two years ago he will have a. Ice twist. They were all March April calves. He should have been able to replace them cheaper this year.

18-23k profit not to be sneezed at with SFP , ANC and maybe a bit of GLAS he will be hitting the 30 k gross profit.

However his system is no good to a dairy farmer as he is limiting numbers. I bet his system will beat any intensive calf to beef system that Teagasc put in place

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119084675#Comment_119084675

I forgot about his land charge and opportunity cost. He probably had noting out of them.

Siamsa Sessions

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119084785#Comment_119084785

That farmer clearly lacks ambition.

He should sell those useless cattle, out-bid everyone in the county for conacre land, take on a million in debt, and start milking cows immediately. I'm sure his land needs to be drained as well. And reseeded. Might be no harm to think about a new tractor too.

Base price

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119084675#Comment_119084675

You must know him cause you more or less summed up his land base and numbers although I don't know if he is in GLAS. We sold him the calves at an average of €265. I think they were around three weeks old. We would have vaccinated them before he bought them.

Siamsa Sessions

Editorial in the IFJ this week. But is anyone in DAFM or the co-ops listening?

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119086370#Comment_119086370

I have as just giving an example of the low stocking level. He must be doing them very well and moving them regularly. He is achieving a weight gain of 0.9 kgs/ day from when he gets them at 3-4 week until they are hung. The real astonishing thing is that he can slaughter them so early off grass with no ration. Admittedly this spring had tremendous thrive.

I presume his winter is quite short, however at the same time he has the ability to obiviously have a decent weigh gain off grass. I would have taught late Autumn and early spring would challenge him with what must be heavy weanlings/ yearling and 18-26 month old bullocks. He obiviously prioritize's the heavier cattle to get them out early. He will have some load of grass from now to August.

amacca

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119084529#Comment_119084529

Just about to say that because I've been that soldier

There are whiteheads and then there are whiteheads!

K.G.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119083651#Comment_119083651

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119081307#Comment_119081307

To be honest the exporter for 5he fr bulls was fine.its a new farmer and another I ve sold to now and again. I've another regular that 120 days has given a bad habit to but that's fine .it's the fella that hasn't paid is really pissing me off he has made all sorts of stupid excuses since.

I m not cribbing about the price s.the market is the market and the end returns are where they are.but just to say its very hard to justify concentrating on the beef breeding side when calves are 0 value and milk is 50 cent.its not up to the calf buyer to incentive breeding it s up to the Larry and his buddies

ginger22

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119088708#Comment_119088708

With milk @ 50 cents why would lads worry about calf price. The important thing is to have enough replacements and no hard calvings. If beef men want good calves then pay a price that will make it worthwhile to breed them. Lads buying calves from the yard would crack you up, always something wrong, much easier to send to mart and take what you get.

Bass Reeves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119088708#Comment_119088708

There is just not enough lads rearing calves for the numbers produced. It's the same with any oversupply.

The lads at suckling are tending towards suckling. They really need to give some incentive for lads to rear calves. The weighting payment is just too small to encourage lads into it.